February 25 2017 The solution to Trumpism? A little kindness and generosity Martin Flanagan http://www.theage.com.au/comment/th...-kindness-and-generosity-20170223-guk7u4.html Helen Fuller, a grandmother of 10 and former primary school teacher, was sitting on a Metro train opposite a white woman about her age and a brown man in his mid-20s when she found herself listening in to their conversation. "I'm blessed with good hearing," she says. She heard the story of how the young man and his family had arrived in Australia from Afghanistan. "He looked a very lovely boy," she says. "I could tell from his face." When the young man – Abuzar Mazoori, a part-time student and youth worker – said that he had not seen anything of Australia but Melbourne, Helen had what she calls an inspiration. "Sometimes I have these impulses to trust people." Leaning forward, she apologised for listening but said she had a holiday house in Rye and perhaps the young man and his family might like to go down and have a week's holiday there over Christmas. Says Abuzar, "Automatically, there were negative thoughts in my mind – why this person offer me her house?" Moss and Helen Fuller with Abuzar Mazoori. Photo: Martin Flanagan For her part, Helen received "a fair bit of negativity" when she told others what she had done. "I was told I was taking a risk. I said, 'People do it for money'." She was supported, however, by her husband, Moss, whom she met at teachers' college in Ballarat 51 years ago. Moss says, "She rules the roost. If she thought it was OK, I did too. I trust her judgment." Moss tells me he remembers Abuzar's name because it sounds the same as "a boozer", another word for pub in his youth, and for that matter, mine. In another part of Melbourne, Abuzar was encountering similar problems. His brother laughed at him when he recounted the story. "My brother said, 'How is this possible? How she trust you? How you trust her?'." Their mother was confronted by the idea of occupying another woman's home, particularly when that woman was a stranger. "She said, 'I don't know what is in the house. What might happen?'." Rye front beach. Helen invited Abuzar to see the holiday house. He arrived with a friend. She then gave him a key and said the house would be vacant from December 24 until January 1. At 10am on December 24, after his family had eaten breakfast, Abuzar placed the key on the table in front of them and said, "What are your decisions?" He says they "negotiated" until four in the afternoon. The family and a young cousin, 10 in all, then drove to Rye. Abuzar says as soon as they reached the holiday house, opened the front door and saw what a comfortable and relaxed place it was, "My father and especially my mother totally changed." Abuzar says they had a nice time. Helen said the place looked lovely when next they went there. She had warned the neighbour that a family of Afghans might be using their holiday house over Christmas. The neighbour later told her she saw the parents watering the back garden. Since then, Moss and Helen have been to Abuzar's home for a meal. The story was brought to my attention by a friend. Helen says, "It was only a small thing, nothing to make a fuss about." But speaking about the fear and uncertainty in the Age of Trump when people spread alarm about terrorist attacks that haven't actually happened, she says, "It's only by doing small things that we can reverse that trend." Meanwhile, Abuzar says, "It doesn't matter who we are. Everyone suffering from disconnecting now."
This is a good story and one that should inspire everyone to do more good in society, but the attempt to slander Trump supporters, and conservatives has no basis in fact, even the New York Times has had to admit conservatives are far more charitable than liberals. Bleeding Heart Tightwads This holiday season is a time to examine who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but I’m unhappy with my findings. The problem is this: We liberals are personally stingy. Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates. Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, “Who Really Cares,” cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals. Other research has reached similar conclusions. The “generosity index” from the Catalogue for Philanthropy typically finds that red states are the most likely to give to nonprofits, while Northeastern states are least likely to do so. The upshot is that Democrats, who speak passionately about the hungry and homeless, personally fork over less money to charity than Republicans — the ones who try to cut health insurance for children. “When I started doing research on charity,” Mr. Brooks wrote, “I expected to find that political liberals — who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did — would turn out to be the most privately charitable people. So when my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views.” Something similar is true internationally. European countries seem to show more compassion than America in providing safety nets for the poor, and they give far more humanitarian foreign aid per capita than the United States does. But as individuals, Europeans are far less charitable than Americans. Americans give sums to charity equivalent to 1.67 percent of G.N.P., according to a terrific new book, “Philanthrocapitalism,” by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green. The British are second, with 0.73 percent, while the stingiest people on the list are the French, at 0.14 percent (Looking away from politics, there’s evidence that one of the most generous groups in America is gays. Researchers believe that is because they are less likely to have rapacious heirs pushing to keep wealth in the family.) When liberals see the data on giving, they tend to protest that conservatives look good only because they shower dollars on churches — that a fair amount of that money isn’t helping the poor, but simply constructing lavish spires. It’s true that religion is the essential reason conservatives give more, and religious liberals are as generous as religious conservatives. Among the stingiest of the stingy are secular conservatives. Opinion Today Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world. Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. SEE SAMPLE PRIVACY POLICY According to Google’s figures, if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do. But Mr. Brooks says that if measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes. In any case, if conservative donations often end up building extravagant churches, liberal donations frequently sustain art museums, symphonies, schools and universities that cater to the well-off. (It’s great to support the arts and education, but they’re not the same as charity for the needy. And some research suggests that donations to education actually increase inequality because they go mostly to elite institutions attended by the wealthy.) Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent. So, you’ve guessed it! This column is a transparent attempt this holiday season to shame liberals into being more charitable. Since I often scold Republicans for being callous in their policies toward the needy, it seems only fair to reproach Democrats for being cheap in their private donations. What I want for Christmas is a healthy competition between left and right to see who actually does more for the neediest. Of course, given the economic pinch these days, charity isn’t on the top of anyone’s agenda. Yet the financial ability to contribute to charity, and the willingness to do so, are strikingly unrelated. Amazingly, the working poor, who have the least resources, somehow manage to be more generous as a percentage of income than the middle class. So, even in tough times, there are ways to help. Come on liberals, redeem yourselves, and put your wallets where your hearts are. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html
Poorer conservatives more generous than wealthy liberals – new study Less well-off families from red states donate a relatively higher – and growing – proportion of their money to charity, while those at the top have been giving a smaller share as their income has increased, a new extensive study has revealed. TagsReligion, USA, Romney Respected non-government sector newspaper The Philanthropy Chronicle collated the itemized charity deductions on the tax returns of hundreds of millions of Americans between 2006 and 2012, the latest year available. While only about a third of all givers write off their charity expenses, the sums included about 80 percent of all donations in the country. The study noted that while the amount of charitable giving by the US as a nation has remained steady at 3 percent, the poorer people are, the greater amount they spend on charity. And this trend has been exacerbated in the years covered by the study, which showed that those earning $25,000 or less contributed 16.6 percent more of their income, while those with incomes of over $200,000 were spending 4.5 percent less of their money on charity in 2012 than in 2006. The study does not give the countrywide overall percentage of money donated by each group. Several explanations have been posited for the findings. “Lower and middle-income people know people who lost their jobs or are homeless, and they worry that they themselves are a day away from losing their jobs. They’re very sensitive to the needs of other people and recognize that these years have been hard,” explained Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Meanwhile, the wealthier donors, who had been able to afford largesse during the fat years through the 90s and early 2000s, became “nervous and cautious” as the financial crisis struck in 2008, threatening their incomes, property and shares. The study also says in places like Las Vegas – whose giving went up 15 percent in real terms – charities redirected their fundraising efforts from the big businessmen, to poorer individuals they had no time and resources for earlier. Another explanation might be that charity giving can remain fairly inelastic in such a short period, despite fluctuating incomes. So, while the poorer people, hard hit by the crisis have struggled to maintain their giving commitments, America’s highest earners, who have recovered most quickly after the crash, have not yet readjusted their giving upwards. After all, the figures show that overall donations from the wealthiest Americans have gone up by $4.6 billion, adjusted for inflation, to $77.5 billion between 2006 and 2012, showing that they are giving more in absolute terms, just not as a proportion of their growing pay packets. Utahans and Romney voters give most In an even starker finding, the study shows that the religious and conservative states are the most generous givers. Seventeen of the most generous states, in relative terms, voted for Romney in 2012, while 15 of the 17 least generous ones picked Obama for re-election. This may expose a correlation between conservative voters believing that redistribution is something that should be done out of their own pocket, not by the government. It may also highlight links between religious belief – more common among Republican voters – and charity donations, which are funnelled towards, and encouraged by the Church. Not coincidentally, the most generous state is Utah (with a giving rate of 6.56 percent), which is dominated by Mormons, who have to give a tenth of their income to their church. On the other side of the scale is New Hampshire, where less than a third of the people say they believe in God, and which donates 1.74 percent of its incomes to charity. Similarly, the cosmopolitan, urbane San Francisco and Boston are at the bottom of a similar ranking for cities, while the Southern and Central strongholds of Salt, Lake City, Birmingham, Memphis, Nashville and Atlanta are among some of the most generous. The most generous town in the US was Canby in California, where 645 people gave $436,000, or 18 percent of their income, to philanthropic causes.
Just FYI: Rye, Victoria 83 km (52 mi) from Melbourne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye,_Victoria Rye is a seaside resort town, approximately 83 km south of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia. Its bay beach is popular with swimmers, fishermen, yachtsmen and kitesurfers. Its ocean beach (which is not patrolled) is also popular with surfers.[2] Its local government area is the Shire of Mornington Peninsula.
Looks like religion and God can be important factors: http://myfirstclasslife.com/top-10-ludicrously-wealthy-pastors/?singlepage=1
IMO More than anything its because conservatives are older, wealthier, and more responsible citizens with more to lose but what do i know.