Jay Ambrose comments on the canard that Americans aren’t as generous as people other countries:
Whatever the case is with his own selfishness, the evidence of an internationally superior American generosity is impressive, beginning with the numbers on our charitable giving. We give twice as much as the British per capita, and according to The American magazine, seven times as much as the Germans and 14 times as much as the Italians.
Even in inflation-adjusted dollars, the amount given each year just keeps getting larger, and meanwhile, we do far more volunteer work than in other industrialized countries.
That’s a subject I’ve posted on from time to time here, for example here.
It’s true that the U. S. government isn’t as large a provider of international humanitarian assistance as some other governments other. But our society is organized along different lines than in those other societies and when you take the broadest possible definition of “humanitarian assistance” we’re as generous as the most generous countries in the world. Our generosity just takes other forms than it does in, say, Sweden.
For example, following the enormous earthquake in Pakistan a couple of years ago the U. S. Navy was one of the the if not the largest healthcare provider in Pakistan for a year or more.
Now I think it’s possible to argue that if all of our largesse were channeled through the federal government we’d make more effective use of our generosity. I’d like to see the argument that it would maximize utility in this country i.e. that it would make us happier.
Essentially the same is true for support for the arts, healthcare, and education. We spend more overall and more per capita than any other country in the world for those things. We just don’t channel the dough through the federal government but through the vast array of institutions including charitable organizations, churches, corporations, and probably more layers of government than any other country in the world. Whether we’re getting the most bang for our buck in doing it that way is probably a discussion we should be having.
