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Post by franko on Dec 16, 2006 23:51:21 GMT -5
It's the working poor, the big spenders and the drunks who keep artist and street person Ryan Connors fed. He spends his days sitting on flattened cardboard boxes, selling his ballpoint-pen sketches of city streetscapes for $5 and begging for change.
After living on the streets on and off for six years, the 22-year-old from Hamilton, Ont., knows a thing or two about fundraising. He has one cardboard sign reading "Spare some food, please," and another for the nighttime crowd, which brings in the most donations. It reads: "I need to smoke a joint."
Occasionally, a big spender will toss him $5 or $10, which can double his daily earnings, but mostly it's the "poor working class who seem to give," he says. "Because they know what it's like to go without."
He earns $20 to $30 a day during the week, $40 to $50 on weekends.
His experience is a microcosm for the charitable donation picture in Canada: It's the wealthy who pony up the most in dollar amounts, but the working poor who give the most in relation to their income; if you want to receive, you have to ask; most people give out of a sense of compassion or empathy.
And, in general, we are very, very cheap.
Americans give US$900 per person to charitable causes each year, while in Canada, the average is $400. In Quebec, the average is $176, the lowest amount of any province or territory. the restSo . . . what do you think. Are we cheap and selfish?
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Post by PTH on Dec 17, 2006 0:08:37 GMT -5
Based on the article, I'm typical for Quebec - I'm willing to vote for a government that'll put in place social programs for everyone, and I'm taxed up the wazoo because of it.
OTOH, what I dislike about charitable giving is that too many organizations have strings attached to their own programs. IE, the Church isn't the organisation to send a poor, uneducated, pregnant teenager to, if you want her to really consider all of her options and not get a very strong message that there is One Way and to listen to God, etc, etc.
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Post by Skilly on Dec 17, 2006 0:33:22 GMT -5
An article in the paper here said that of every dollar you donate to MADD, MADD only gets 19 cents. One should choose their charities wisely...
That being said I feel that selfless acts are the ones that should be looked upon and not "tax reducing efforts". Using myself as an example. I donate $650 to the church every year (well every year my wife isnt on maternity leave) ... but that is a tax reducing effort. I would give it to another charity just as freely if I knew I could trust them.
But I also give presents to less fortunate families this time of year where I do not want anyone to know it came from me. I get more from these acts of kindness than blindly giving to reduce my taxes minutely.
Am I cheap? I am when it comes to certain things (my wife can vouch for that).... but I feel that a small gift of kindness, especially one that a person can afford, is immeasurable.
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Post by franko on Dec 17, 2006 8:21:05 GMT -5
OTOH, what I dislike about charitable giving is that too many organizations have strings attached to their own programs. IE, the Church isn't the organisation to send a poor, uneducated, pregnant teenager to, if you want her to really consider all of her options and not get a very strong message that there is One Way and to listen to God, etc, etc. That's unfortunate, isn't it. The church should be a place of refuge and repair but instead can be a place of condemnation, for this and for many other issues. If the church is going to be boldly pro-life then it needs to be pro-help as well; instead of saying "don't get an abortion" to single moms and walking away from them we in "the church" should say "and let us help you through these hard times. At time we stand condemend for our callousness.
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Post by franko on Dec 17, 2006 8:23:58 GMT -5
The article says that Albertans give more per donor, but I remember reading a few years back that Newfoundlanders give more per capita.
It's been shown in more than one study that the less you have the more you are willing to share (I guess because one can identify with another "sufferer").
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Post by MC Habber on Dec 17, 2006 19:58:17 GMT -5
The politics of Ebenezer ScroogeMiser or free-market player? The first copies of A Christmas Carol appeared 163 years ago today but Scrooge's true character remains a topic of debate even nowWe all recognize Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol as a heart-warming story of the redemption of a mean, stingy, grasping, emotionally crippled gentleman into a generous, happy soul, but there is a crucial aspect to the tale that has received far less recognition: What are the politics of Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim and the Yuletide ghosts? And are their adventures an advertisement for socialism, or free-market economics? Dickens is certainly fair game for political scrutiny, given his reputation for attacking social ills in his fiction. A novelist who is also a reformer can be a lightning rod, and Dickens played this role beginning with his second novel, Oliver Twist, which appeared in instalments from 1837 to 1838. The harsh conditions endured by the young orphan hero were a direct attack on the 1834 Poor Law, which decreed that the poor must go to workhouses — a fate slightly better than outright starvation. That law, in turn, was based on the theories of T.R. Malthus, a Victorian clergyman who maintained that poverty was inevitable because population increased in a geometric ratio while subsistence increased only in an arithmetical ratio. If you were kind to paupers, this theory ran, you were only encouraging them to breed and produce more hungry mouths. This widespread belief is behind Scrooge's snarling reference to workhouses and "the surplus population," when approached by two gentlemen soliciting charitable donations for the poor. A Christmas Carol was a product of Dickens' discovery that you could ...
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