I don't think it's a straightforward percentage. IMO people who are just doing 'ok' really have no obligation to give to charity - their first responsibility is to provide for themselves and their families. I would even go as far as to say that this includes the large majority of Americans - certainly if your household is making the median income, if you're raising a couple of kids you really should be using any extra money to save for college and retirement, not giving it to soup kitchens.Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
Using the same logic, once your needs and those of your family are taken care of (including future financial security), should there really be an upper limit on charity? For someone worth $100 million, it really doesn't make sense for them to use any of their income for non-charitable purposes - with the exception of business owners whose wealth is tied up in a growing business and difficult to access. In such a world, you really only have a fairly narrow slice of the American public who need to worry about this question - those who are relatively comfortable but not truly wealthy. At most a quintile, probably much less.
On the other hand, I really don't fall into the 'wealthy' or even 'comfortable' category (yet), but I still give a modest proportion of my income directly to charity (rather than indirectly through the sizable portion of my taxes that go to various social programs). What gives? I think that the reason you get substantial giving among the less well-off (as a proportion of income) - and why I think it's a good idea - is because there's more to charity than numbers and disposable income. I think the American philanthropic culture is absolutely fantastic because it creates a sense of community, of civil society being an important endeavor we are all engaged in together. People who are in the habit of giving/volunteering/etc. for their community (whether it's a local, national, or international concern) have a shared 'commons' that they have a stake in, much more so than how we feel about our taxes. This culture of giving means that, first, when a small proportion of us become truly wealthy we have a norm to follow, and second, the rest of us can have some form of participation and agency in strengthening civil society.
(Parenthetically, I have noted that this culture does not extend everywhere in the Western world. Certainly looking around Israel I've noticed that most institutions and non-profits are funded generously and named - mostly after Americans, and the occasional Brit. They're paid for by charity either from ex-pats or people still living in the US who think, say, a university building is a worthy cause. Israeli billionaires (and multi-millionaires) do not, as a rule, give significant chunks of their wealth to charity. The notable exceptions generally prove the rule, and I think it's a symptom of a larger problem. One can provide all sorts of suggestions for why this might be the case - and certainly Israel has a fairly strong and vibrant civil society and tradition of volunteerism - but philanthropy is not the default there, and I think it's unfortunate.)
So, in sum, you could distill my philosophy of charity down to: everyone should be in the habit of giving their time or money, but it should be on a sliding scale of magnitude.
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