[krzysiek]

> In the contemporary world, philanthropy is distinctively American. We give about four hundred and seventy billion dollars a year—more if you count donations of time, physical labor, and material. America’s total is ahead of any other country’s, even as a percentage of G.D.P.

Well, this is just not true.

Americans give 2.1% of GDP to charity [1] while the whole world gives just under 3% [2]. Also when you take a look at a comparison between countries [3] you can see that the US is far behind (percentage-wise, not rank-wise) countries like Netherlands (14%) or Switzerland (13.3%)

1. https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&...

2. https://www.privatebank.citibank.com/newcpb-media/media/docu...

3. https://www.axios.com/2019/11/30/most-charitable-countries-w...

[benpbenp]

Your global figure includes both donations and value of time donated ([2], pg.8)

Your US figure ([1]) doesn't say anything about value of time donated so I'd assume it is not included.

Finally, the metric where Netherlands and Switzerland come out on top in [3] is in size of philanthropic assets vs GDP. This is noteworthy for sure but is a an entirely different thing than amount of yearly donations.

[krzysiek]

You're totally right about donations + value of time. Thank you for pointing that out. It's hard to tell if these numbers can be compared. Also [4] paints a very different picture (although it's for 2016).

I think that philanthropic assets should correlate to donations, but you're right also here the numbers from this source cannot be compared to the numbers I mentioned before.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitabl...

[croon]

What would be more interesting would be comparing it after including welfare/public education/healthcare/poverty rates etc.

Best case scenario would be where no charity is needed, am I wrong?

[krzysiek]

Honestly I believe that the other way around would be way better. There is a lot of inefficiencies in the way governments work, plus they operate like monopolies.

On the other hand there is competition between nonprofits, plus they are often multinational.

I find it interesting that some of the most efficient government organizations (like World Food Programme) actually operate as charities (in the sense that everyone can donate to them).

[blairharper]

Welfare should rightly fund "survival" and "levelling the playing field" resources, but charity can offer more than that - it can offer quality of life and a sense of community/belonging. It's nice to be around other people who are going through the same things, and people who support you.

So I think charity will always have a role, both financially and socially.

[rmbyrro]

Maybe a good relativistic metric would be donations per capita vs. GDP per capita.

Considering purchasing power parity GDP would be even better.

[paisawalla]

I suspect this accounts for the discrepancy in their accounting

> more if you count donations of time, physical labor and material

[chaosbolt]

Substract from that how much money you made from Iraqi oil and how many houses/infrastructure you destroyed there and the result might be negative, and that's for a single country.

This whole charity idea is stupid if you're a country like the US, it's like kicking someone in the balls then giving them an aspirin for the pain and bragging about how generous you are.