whoreallycares@ccjj.info
The central thesis of this book is that conservatives are more generous to charity than liberals, that religious people are more generous than secularists, and that charitable giving is one of the best things for the health of a society. Throughout the book a very strong agenda of conservative politics and religion (no specific religion) is promoted.
But Brooks' style is frustrating to the critical mind. Prior to the appendix, he doesn't draw graphs or present tables of data, he quotes isolated statistics. He'll choose one statistic comparing 'religious' Alabama versus 'secular' Massachusetts, then another comparing, say 'conservative' Tennessee versus 'liberal' New York. A different, apparently random, choice of localities each time. And in one instance he will cite a group he likes as being '21 percentage points' more likely than a group he doesn't to display some desirable behavior. What does '21 percentage points' mean? The group he liked was 22% likely to do some good deed versus 1% of the group he didn't like, or 99% to 78%? Or 60.5% to 50%? (50% times 1.21 = 60.5%). The next time he will give no number, just say "more likely". One time he will compare how much each of two groups gives, another time he will compare how likely they are to give. By making these arbitrary choices of which how he presents each statistic, he is giving himself a lot of power to spin the story to his liking.
He generally doesn't give us the broad picture, but instead a zoomed-in snippet of it each time, and each time giving a statistic from a different, carefully chosen angle. It leaves me with the impression that he is cherry-picking his data to support his very aggressive political and religious agenda. One has a feeling through most of the book like one is playing cards with a dealer who leaves the room to shuffle the deck before each hand.
It wasn't until I was nearly done with the book that noticed there
is an appendix in
the back that does provide tables with a much more complete look at the
data. One
table of charitable giving, on page 193, is particularly central to the
thesis of the
book: Religious conservatives, 19.1% of the population, give an average
of $2367, Secular
liberals, 10.5% of the population, give $741, Religious liberals, 6.4%,
give $2123,
Secular conservatives, 7.3%, give $661.
So among religious people, conservatives are
only 11.1% more
charitable than religious liberals, not that big a difference really,
not enough to
justify all the fuss Brooks makes over it. And in the book,
Brooks mentions that
religious liberals are more likely than religious conservatives to
belong to minority
groups, meaning they are probably on average poorer, and thus having to
donate a larger
share of their income to come as close as they do to matching the
giving of religious
conservatives.
And this data tells us that among secularists,
liberals are
giving on average 12.1% more than conservatives.
In the book, Brooks clearly states that
controlling for religion,
conservatives give more than liberals, but his own appendix just does
not support this
conclusion, which is absolutely central to the thesis of the book.
A fishy thing about this table is that these 4 given categories of people add up to only 43.3% of the population. Where does the other 56.7% (the majority) of the population fit in with all this? So even in his appendix, Brooks is not putting even a majority of the cards on the table.
Now this table shows us that religious people give 3 times as much as secularists, but it doesn't break the giving down into religious vs secular giving very well. The appendix never clearly shows us, for religious people, how much of their giving is secular giving. Brooks makes no secret of the fact that he is, and probably always has been, a big fan of religion, and it doesn't seem to occur to him that in order to persuade anybody who disagrees with him that it would be appropriate to give a breakdown of how much of religious funding finds its way into activities that a secularist would agree are beneficial. Drive around any American neighborhood and you will see that an awful lot of religious money is finding its way into needlessly showy and extravagant architecture.
Another factor is that many liberals deliberately choose professions that are not very lucrative but that they see as beneficial to society, like teaching or social work, and this is a big financial sacrifice that does not make its way into Brooks' statistics. This effect would be offset by conservatives who for ideological reasons choose careers in the military or clergy over more potentially lucrative professions.
There is a lot of talk in the book about an individual's beliefs regarding the government's role in redistribution of income influencing charitable giving, finding that the more strongly feel that the government should redristribute income, the less likely they are personally to give to others. Brooks fails to discuss one issue, and I think if he did, he would agree with me on this - people who advocate redistribution of income fall into two very different categories - the first, group A, are genuinely concerned about the needs of the poor, and the second, group B, possibly the majority, are deeply galled at the thought that anyone else might be enjoying a better lifestyle than themselves. I would maintain that group B is probably unlikely to be charitable to anybody. The statistics and analysis that Brooks shows fail to draw any distinction between these two groups, which could be done by careful phrasing of the questions on a survey. From my own experience, many liberals make no attempt at all to hide the fact that they are far more offended by wealth than poverty.
Brooks maligns the welfare state at length, talking about how voluntary charity is more beneficial than state welfare. He talks about how welfare reform during the Clinton administration turned out to be a good thing, but I think most of his discussion of welfare is about how it was prior to this reform. Fine, let's say that reform was a good thing, but it was ten years ago - what about now? And Brooks fails to discuss an important quality of the result: which yields better results at alleviating poverty? I would like to see a comparison between Europe, with its extensive government safety net, and the US, in statistics like what percentage of children are showing up at school malnourished.
If voluntary charity is so preferable to forcible taxation as a means of financing charity, what about other services of the government - shouldn't the Department of Defense, the Department of Corrections, and the Department of Sanitation all be financed by voluntary giving? What makes feeding the poor so different from these other functions?
Brooks is eager to sound an alarm about a lack of charitable giving in Europe being a sign of secular moral decay. The welfare state in Europe has its negative effects, such as higher taxes and a large class of freeloaders, but if they have, for the most part, eradicated poverty, would it make sense to expect Europeans to privately give to the poor, any more than it would be to expect Americans to privately donate to the construction of freeways and bridges? Why should people give privately to a cause that is being adequately addressed by the government?
An issue not discussed at all in this book is political giving. I have heard many times that Republicans are able to raise a lot more political funds than Democrats. In 2002, not even a major election year, I changed from Republican to Democrat and was greeted by a huge increase in inflammatory political junk mail asking for money. Evidently the Republicans get enough without having to ask. I think many people would see political donations made by individuals without expectation of political influence as a form of charitable giving, and Brooks does not make it clear whether it is included in the giving cited in his book. There are a lot of interesting things to be said about political giving, and they are conspicuously absent from this book.
A counterpoint to this book was a website provided by Gregory S Paul
in the Journal of
Religion and Society, http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
, where he makes statistical comparisons between the "religious" US and
"secular" Western Europe and Japan. In "religious" America, he
finds more homicides, more infant mortality, lower life expectancy,
more gonorrhea, more
syphilis, more abortions among young people, and more teen
pregnancies. Paul also
finds, of course, more belief in Creationism, which he perceives to be
a social ill, in
America.
I think Europe's socialized medicine could account
for differences in
infant mortality, life expectancy, and curable VD.
Interestingly, Brooks doesn't talk about any of
these social ills,
while Paul doesn't discuss charitable giving. It is also
interesting that Paul
doesn't discuss herpes, which, being incurable, would have rates
unaffected by socialized
medicine. Another thing on Paul's study is that Ireland fits in
with Europe in terms
of its performance with respect to all these social ills, even
Creationism, yet it is in
fact a very religious country.
While these two authors really couldn't be much more
ideologically
opposed, they don't really contradict each other, they just choose to
talk about different
things. It would be a lot of fun to get them both on the same
stage.
One thing that Brooks talks about it in the book, over and over
again, is how studies
show that people in a group he likes (religious or conservative, I
forget which) are more
likely to return mistaken change to a cashier. In the appendix in
pages 195-196 we
finally find how this data was obtained - by asking people if they have
done so! Hello!
That's worthless! The lowest con artist is
virtually guaranteed to
answer that he has done the right thing. Duh!
I would also note that since religious people talk about morals so
much, there is a
popular perception, justified or not, that religious people have a
higher moral standard.
Given this, an aspiring con artist, to win the trust of suckers,
is going to make a
big outward show of religiosity, so there will be many among the ranks
of the outwardly
religious who are in fact the worst elements of society. Reminds
me of a fortune
cookie I got: "When dinner guest talk, talk, talk of his honor, is time
for host to
count, count, count spoons.".
Though I criticize Brooks at length, he has written a very
entertaining, thought
provoking book, the only one I have read on the subject of charitable
giving, and he has
certainly succeeded in one purpose - he has shamed me toward being more
generous in the
future. The statistics on how much money is given, as a portion
of their income, by
poor people who shun welfare, are pretty humbling to those of us who
are better off.
