Oh, and as far as the “obnoxious adolescents” comment goes, you’re the one whining and complaining and sounding like a spoiled, pampered little child, whereas I am giving reasonable replies to your complaints. Think about that.

If the US collected appropriate tax money from the truly wealthy instead of allowing the wealthiest to evade taxes via “donation” (even to their own charities!), then the US could easily pay for full health care, full education, and full income protection for all its citizens (and this is why the comparison between wealthy European countries and the US just can’t be made–a lot of those problems are well addressed via taxes, which fund these services for their citizens). When a growing number of your citizens are unable to access even basic health care, or your injured soldiers can’t afford to care for their ailments and won’t be served by their country because it’s too costly, or your citizens can’t afford education costs in order to find decent work, or most of the people in the country don’t even have work that pays a living wage and lawmakers don’t care to address the growing poverty rate–you need a heck of a lot of charity in your country.

I may be “missing the point of the article” by ignoring the “give only to the charities you know”, but the article is misrepresenting some important facts that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Lets not forget most of these ‘donations’ are simply a tax dodge, and most often go back into the ‘givers’ pocket.

You example of a 30 billion donation that went to the own mans charity is hilarious.

IKEA is actually a charity… do you think they actually help people? no its a huge ‘legal’ fraud carried out because of loopholes.

Look it up, its a good example of how charity giving figures can be skewed.

1. Don’t make donations over the phone.
2. Don’t attend charity events.

Are you suggesting charitable organizations should sit back and wait for the phone to ring? How can you criticize inflated administrative expenses while simultaneously encouraging donors to adopt behavior which in turn results in charitable orgs adopting higher cost strategies? Is it practical to suggest donors simply pick up the phone and call? What would happen to all of these contributions if organizations stopped asking and simply waited for donors to become inspired on their own. Giving is an exchange. The steps leading to giving require an exchange.

There is some good information here. But the recommendations, in my opinion, miss the mark.

As a final note: Giving USA has also been providing valuable data on giving (annually) for many decades.