Four of the world’s five most charitable nations also rank among the ten most economically free, a comparison of a pair of studies finds. The Charities Aid Foundation released its annual World Giving Index on Wednesday. The survey ranks the nations of the world according to a definition of charity that includes direct donations to charitable organizations, volunteer work, and the helping of strangers in need. The world’s five most charitable nations, according to the report, are, in order: the United States, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. …
Churches will be aglow on Thanksgiving as families gather to express their gratitude for the blessings they’ve experienced. Their continuing presence in the pews would bode well for our nation as well, given that decades of sociological studies have documented the relationship between church attendance and charitable giving, volunteerism, and civic involvement. In a comprehensive study of charity in America, Who Really Cares, American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks found that those who attend church weekly are more likely to donate money to a charitable cause than peers who seldom …
As featured in a recent issue of World Magazine, the faith-based organization Hope Now for Youth is successfully reaching out to young men embroiled in gangs and violence in Fresno, California. Hope Now helps gang members and their families break a generational cycle of violence and poverty by achieving lasting self-sufficiency through mentorship and job training. The Hope Now program equips young men with job skills and helps them find jobs, teaching them the values of personal responsibility and work ethic necessary to become self-reliant. Beyond material well-being, however, Hope …
A budget plan sensitive to the needs of the poor would encourage charitable giving, right? At the very least, in an economy where more people struggle to pay for medical procedures and their kids’ education, a responsible budget shouldn’t discourage giving to hospitals or universities, right? Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for President Obama’s proposed 2012 federal budget. Obama’s plan, which the Senate Finance Committee will discuss at a hearing this Wednesday, would likely dampen charitable giving in the years ahead. The plan would not only weaken one of the …
The President’s Budget The Actual Cost: The $634 billion in the President’s budget is only a “down payment” on health care reform. Experts believe that the actual cost of Obama’s health care plan could reach $1.6 trillion over 10 years. This is in addition to the trillions of dollars Obama has already spent on health care this year through the stimulus and SCHIP. Details, Please: On such an important piece of the President’s budget and agenda, there is little detail on what the Administration expects to spend with the $634 …
President Barack Obama’s FY 2010 budget proposal to cut the tax deductions that wealthy Americans can claim for their charitable donations has been roundly criticized, including by us here and by Harvard University economic professor Martin Feldstein here. But Obama does have his leftist defenders, including New York City Coalition Against Hunger executive director Joel Berg who writes: Combined with other progressive Obama tax proposals, that change would not only start to redress the inequality gap that has engulfed America in recent decades but would also help to pay for …
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKlYT2bseII[/youtube]Before the Tonight Show aired last night, President Barack Obama called Special Olympics Chairman Tim Shriver to apologize for making fun of Special Olympic athletes during his jovial performance on the late night comedy show. This was the correct course of action for a very un-Presidential remark during a very un-Presidential appearance. However, President Obama should have apologized for his new tax-and-spend policies which will make it nearly impossible for the Special Olympics to raise the money necessary to continue operating at their heroic level. The President is reducing charitable …
The American dream used to consist of the one underlying principle that every generation had the opportunity to do better than the generation that preceded it. Sometimes this dream is realized in grand fashion as it is with our President, who was raised by a single mother with a father he barely knew living on another continent and who had access to school choice programs. Sometimes it simply means making a little more, living in a better neighborhood and sending your kids to a better school or even college through …
Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget for President Obama, responded Friday to critics of the administration’s proposal to reduce the amount of charitable contributions that high-income taxpayers can deduct. Many tax analysts, including this writer, argued that such a reduction would deplete much needed resources from charitable organizations and further undercut our civil society. Not to worry, writes Mr. Orszag. We wouldn’t do this in the midst of a recession, and it’s only fair that high-income and lower-income taxpayers enjoy about the same tax deduction for …
Here’s a test: Guess who made most of the charitable contributions in 2006, according to the most recent data available from the Internal Revenue Service? If you guessed “taxpayers with high incomes”, you’d win the prize. Now, guess which class of taxpayers the Obama administration wants to discourage from making charitable contributions. If you guessed “taxpayers with high incomes”, you just won again. The new Obama budget for Fiscal Year 2010 proposes that Congress reduce the tax deduction for charitable contributions by high income taxpayers. That worries many charities who …
