The story helps illustrate several truths at once. Firstly, we give more charitable donations than any other nation on earth. Thus, we are a charitable people.
About 65% of households with incomes less than $100,000 give to charity, the report showed.
Care to guess where the largest chunk of that amount goes?
The biggest chunk of the donations, $96.82 billion or 32.8%, went to religious organizations.
Of course, this overall group would include such undesirables as Benny Hinn’s ministry, but I’m still not surprised that the largest chunk is donated to religious groups.
The report also proves that we are a deluded people.
The second largest slice, $40.98 billion or 13.9%, went to education, including gifts to colleges, universities and libraries
Actually, donating to libraries is good. However, we have huge amounts of donations being given to educational institutions atop the public monies already funding them. And we continually bemoan the state of education in this country. Clearly, throwing money at it doesn’t help. In fact, education (as an entity) simply becomes more and more bloated, constantly hungry for more and more money. It models the government that has created this monster. All the while the entity does not improve; it simply becomes more rich.
Gaudiani said Americans give twice as much as the next most charitable country, according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation. In philanthropic giving as a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. ranked first at 1.7%. No. 2 Britain gave 0.73%, while France, with a 0.14% rate, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany.
Where are the fabulously rich Arab nations? Where are Islamic nations to be found? They must be too busy giving all of their money to terrorist organizations. I bet all of the haters of the U.S. hate this report. It shows flaws, but it shows that we seem to have a kind heart nationally.
