Split- US Donations

But your argument appears to be that your 200 is better and more important than Gates hundreds of millions.
 
the bible isn't a black and white document. You can agree with some parts of it and disagree with others. Even atheists would concede that the Christian faith lays down some moral guidelines that are hard to argue against. I quoted it because it adequately demonstrates the point I was trying to make, and no, I havn't taken it out of context!
 
Well, actually, you have taken it out of context. But I will let you try and figure out how.
 
If I give 1% of my annual income to charity and Bill Gates gives 1% of his annual income to charity then we are in effect giving the same amount to charity.

If I give 1% and Gates gives 0.9% then I am giving more, regardless of how much more cold hard cash his 0.9% equates to.

Why are people struggling with this basic concept?
 
Ok, you are doing 1 of 2 things here.

1) Trying to bait me into returning a hostile response

2) Proving you have no idea about the bible or the teachings of Jesus Christ.

So which is it?
 
Your Bible passage was reasonable, but I wonder about the data. With respect to donations to the United Nations you're probably right. We probably do give less than other countries. I don't doubt it. But with respect to other donations, I genuinely wonder how much private aid is picked up by the statistics. There are many private-aid groups in the United States to which citizens voluntarily contribute after-tax dollars. Collectively the amount of money contributed is huge. This money goes overseas to help the sick and poor in other countries. Are those dollars reflected in the statistics? I sincerely doubt it.



You haven't displayed a very convincing coofftopicnd of the Bible yourself, but I don't want to argue with you about the "widow's mite" parable. Whether it's spot on or not you made a good point all the same. But, I do question whether the data accurately reflects how much American money really goes to other countries.
 
I am actually a Roman Catholic (ret), one who went to church twice a week for 10 years, and suffered through 11 years of religious education (read: bible study with a week on Judaism and a week on Islam). So my knowledge of Bible stories is actually still pretty good.
 
Actually, neither. I was being very serious. If you want to PM, I would be happy to explain why I think it is out of context.
 
For instance, the US was recognized as giving $35 million to the Tsunami relief. That turned into $350 million. And later turned into $981 million. All of that from the US Government. That doesn't count sources like the Southern Baptist convention which gave nearly $20 million plus volunteers from it's denomination. The United Methodist gave over $32 million. And the list goes on and on and on. And of course, while those church groups contribute to the disasters, they are contributing around the world, disaster or not. Our small church supports a number of medical missionaries who provide free medical care in third world countries.

While our financial aid is huge, I also do not believe the efforts of the Peace Corps is included in government aid dollars as it is both a volunteer function of the State department but also is seen as goodwill building. I may be wrong on this, but I couldn't find anywhere that it was included.
 
Any documenation of any info? Does it matter anyway? The U.N. is like student council in high school; they spend a lot of time and money to make some people feel productive while accomplishing nothing.
 
If the tax burden was in the 60-75% range as it is in some of the Scandinavian countries you cited as being the most generous (and I'm not disputing they are) than yes, many Americans on fixed incomes, ie the elderly and the disabled would be unable to afford the homes they live in now. How is reducing their standard of living, one they worked their whole life to attain justified in the name of helping the poor? What gives any gov't the right to do that? If my Grandfather wants to sell his home, move into a smaller house, and donate the savings to a charity that's great. But what right does the gov't have to force him thru taxation to do that against his will?
 
I just can't pass up the opportunity to point out that according to Hamas, if you did the same thing with the Koran, all true muslims are obligated to kill you.
 
No you know how I felt as you were struggling to understand the premise that while all Muslims are not Jihadists, all Jihadists are Muslims and their ideology, which is the ideology of Hamas, precludes them from ever allowing Israel to exist.

But for what it's worth, I understand the concept you are articulating, and even agree with you in principle.
 
hmmmm....

I lose roughly a third of my annual income to the goverment, which supports US schools, social programs, etc. Now you want me to lose more money in terms of the goverment taxing me so they can give it away to another country?!?

I don't think so. I'm a civil servant for God's sake. I have a large mortgage in loans to pay back to the goverment because the US GOVERNMENT paid for my entire post-collegiate education. It's because of the US GOVERNMENT student assistance programs I was able to go to graduate school and graduate from law school. Yeah, I'm not happy to spend several hundred dollars a month to make up for it, but if it weren't for GOVERNMENT assistance programs, I wouldn't have been able to go in the first place!

You can gripe about the amount of cash the US donates to other countries, but we aren't taxed out the wazoo, we aren't a socialist state, and my government provides hundreds of thousands of students who couldn't otherwise afford to go to school the opportunity to do so. That makes us greedy how?

That doesn't even take into account the fact that we have a decent federal housing program which provides people who couldn't otherwise afford it with their first real home, we provide medical assiatence to those who can't afford it...don't even think about telling me otherwise, my grandmother is on Medicare, had a very serious and expensive surgery several years ago, and Medicare and Medicaid paid over $100,000 in medical expenses and she didn't owe a dime!

These are three major examples of how the US Goverment keeps charity at home. And I'm quite happy about it, thank you very much. I don't need to have MORE money taken out of my paycheck every other week to support a third world country whose debts to us we've ignored for decades. Call me greedy, but with all the social programs I've seen and experienced firsthand, I'm pretty happy with US Charity.
 
I doubt there is a person on this planet who does not live their life in a way that crosses into behavior advocated within the Quran.
 
The UK does all that and more and still gives a greater percentage in foreign aid. I'd like to point out that if you are worried about how the government spends its budget, you might want to look at the defence spending of the US in comparison to every other country in the world. Now those are some shocking statistics.
 
The main difference is that half of Europe is Socialist.

And I'm not complaining about the way the budget is spent, I'm complaining about the fact that a bunch of Europeans have nothing better to do that constantly bash the US for not being the doormat of the world.
 
Thye US economy is more fficient than Europen counterparts. The US can give more with a lower percentage. We do more with less.
 
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