Conservatives more generous than liberals even when it comes to donating blood

Syracuse University professor, Arthur Brooks, "The child of academics, raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts, Brooks has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income."

He writes in his new book "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism" that: "conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.

Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone's tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don't provide them with enough money.

The belief that conservatives are mean, nasty and unwilling to be charitable, don't care about the poor or unwell, has always seemed to me to be a myth dropped into political conversation in order to win points and was not at all true.  Brooks, who claims that his data, accumulated over the past decade from more than ten data bases, is almost unhappy with his findings.

"These are not the sort of conclusions I ever thought I would reach when I started looking at charitable giving in graduate school, 10 years ago," he writes in the introduction. "I have to admit I probably would have hated what I have to say in this book."

In the end, he points out quite strongly that that liberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood.

Comments

[ron]

no surprise with those findings. don't you just love those liberals in places like new york upper east side and beverly hills talking about the plight of the poor at one of those fancy cocktail parties which they got to by driving there 5 mile per gallon hummer or mercedes, when the best they can do is high illegal immigrants and then not pay their social security. of course , there is the middle class liberal and poor liberal wanting the govenment to raise everyones taxes for their special handout. wouldn't it be fun to be one of those rich liberals and and advocate everyone paying higher taxes, while sitting around drinking 20 year old single malt scotch and bragging how your tax attorney just saved you millions by setting up the newest tax shelter. of course, as the study points out the poor and the needy aren't going to see much of that money.

[ron]

comments form the folks at power point. Senator John Edwards liberal hypocrisy.
This reminds me of Peter Schweizer's excellent book, Do As I Say, Not As I Do. Schweizer's book contains highly entertaining recitations of mind-boggling liberal hypocrisy. (In fact, now that Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House, we should dust off his profile of her.) But beyond mocking liberals, Schweizer makes a more profound point: when conservatives act in a hypocritical manner, violating their own principles, they go astray and screw up their lives. When iberals, on the other hand, act hypocritically, they usually are also acting reasonably. They find their principles hard to follow in their own lives in part because their principles are wrong.

This case is a good example. Edwards recited the very silly liberal critique of Wal-Mart as a threat to low-income people. His aide, however, when charged with buying the Senator a PS3, quite reasonably went to Wal-Mart because he knew he would get the best price there. Which is, of course, why Wal-Mart is one of the greatest boons to people of modest means in recent history. Edwards should learn from his aide, not criticize him

[Sid]

According to CNN cost of living calculator:

Salary in New York (Manhattan) NY: $100,000
Comparable salary in Marshall County AL: $43,046.48

If you move from New York (Manhattan) NY to Marshall County AL…

Groceries will cost: 28.77% less
Housing will cost: 78.669% less
Utilities will cost: 41.379% less
Transportation will cost: 20.983% less
Healthcare will cost: 39.198% less

Nearly 50% of all liberals live in (more expensive) urban areas, while nearly 50% of all conservatives live in the (less expensive) south. So what I want to know is, did the writer compare apples to apples? Are his income groups set up to account for cost of living? When calculating percentage of income given to charity does he use income after taxes and cost of living? If he does, then he needs to compare New York liberals who make $100,000 with Alabama conservatives who make closer to $40,000. I think we’ll see a much different picture. Otherwise, he is just lying with statistics.

Also, when a a guy who works at the American Enterprise Institute says he is shocked that conservatives come out looking better in his study than liberals, I’m skeptical.

[Larry Burks II]

As a novie researcher I'd like to see what methods he used in researching this topic. I saw coverage of this study on the O'Reilly show, if he did this using the same methods discussed on the show, the results are questionable.