Americans Still Giving Record Amounts To Charity, Despite Recession

Proponents of libertarianism have long advocated a return to emphasizing charitable, private giving in order to meet the truly deserving social needs of this great country, instead of mandated "giving" in the form of taxes.

Americans have more than met the call, and a recent AP story indicates that despite the recession, Americans are still giving record amounts. From the gist of the article, however, one would almost conclude that charitable giving had dried up.

"Charitable giving fell by 3.6 percent last year as Americans continued to struggle with the recession, though some philanthropic experts feared the decrease could have been much worse given the economic downturn, according to an authoritative annual survey released Wednesday.

Americans donated $303.75 billion during 2009, the second-worst year since 1956, when the Giving USA Foundation started conducting its surveys. The worst year was 1974, when giving fell an inflation-adjusted 5.5 percent. However, 2009 also was the third-straight year giving reached more than $300 billion." (emphasis added)

So, yes, charitable giving was technically down (slightly) from 2008, but with the unemployment rate continuously skyrocketing during the 2009 year, that is hardly a surprise. But calling 2009 the "second worst year since 1956" is plainly ridiculous, and points only to the decline in giving year over year.

The fact that Americans continue to give in record amounts (over $300 billion) is what is telling.

Keep in mind that this charitable giving is in addition to the massive amounts of taxes forced on taxpayers that are then funneled to various social causes by the government.

A 2007 AP article points that the US gives twice as much the next most generous country (the United Kingdom). But even that statistic is skewed, as it is based on giving as a percentage of GDP. In absolute dollars then, the amount of giving by Americans is much, much higher than the overall giving by the British.

All of this private giving should give comfort to many that the true needs of this country can be met by private donors, and we do not need an overarching government stealing our money in order to fund "needs" that they deem to be necessary.