If charity was the answer to our problems, then there would be no homelessness in America, no poverty in general. We would have a much better health care system and school systems that truly met the needs of children and society’s common good. But this is not the way that it is, much to the chagrin of Republicans.

The United States is a charitable nation, and as previously reported in Occasional Planet, Republicans are far more charitable than Democrats. But as our recent Occasional Planet public opinion survey shows, the issue is not that Democrats are stingy, rather it is that they see government as the best way to address problems like hunger.

Occasional Planet asked* a random sample of 550 Americans, “In your opinion, what is the best way to address hunger in America?”

Slightly more saw government assistance rather than charity as the preferable way to solve hunger, however nearly six in ten said that both avenues are of equal value. But as we break it down to various demographic or affiliation groups, we find a clear pattern.

You can see inside the red ellipse that Republicans are almost ten times as likely as Democrats to think that charity alone is the best way to address hunger in America. Inside the blue ellipse, we see that Democrats are about 2 ½ times as likely as Republicans to think that the best way to address the issue is through government assistance. On all counts, Independents expectedly fall in the middle.

Party affiliation involves a choice. But are demographic factors behind the party affiliations the cause of these differences? First a look at gender:

Even without the ellipses, you can see that the differences are negligible. What about race and ethnicity?

The differences between what Caucasians and minorities think is statistically insignificant.

When it comes to income level, we do see one significant difference:

Respondents who live in households with annual incomes of less than $50,000, have only about a third as much confidence in charity as those making over $50,000. This is particularly interesting because the “blue respondents” (those from households with incomes under $50,000 per year), are the very people who are frequently on the receiving end of both charity and government assistance. With only 7% of the blue respondents thinking that charity is the best way to address hunger, it is pretty clear that those who know best do not think that the job can be done best through charity alone.

So here is what we learned from this survey on addressing hunger in America:

1. Most Americans think that the way to address hunger in America is through a combination of charity and government assistance.
2. The people in our society who are the poorest and most likely to be recipients of charity and government assistance do not have very much confidence in the effectiveness of charity alone.
3. By a factor of ten, Republicans are more inclined to favor charity as the sole solution to hunger in America than Democrats are.
4. Perhaps most importantly, this may be why charitable giving by Republicans is greater than that of either Democrats in the United States or Europeans as a whole. However, the Democratic view that government assistance is a much better way to solve hunger than charity is very consistent with the strong support that Bernie Sanders has received in his presidential bid.

Bernie has touched many nerves in the electorate, and this survey clearly demonstrates that one of them is that his own party is much more supportive of government programs than with voluntary charity.

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

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You can tell a lot about a society by what its citizens compliment themselves about. You might also learn a great deal about a society’s insecurities by what citizens say to make themselves feel good.

The United States is perhaps the most charitable nation in the world. According to the 2014 World Giving Index, the U.S. actually tied with Myanmar (you can use that factoid to win some points, somewhere, somehow). The U.S. is the only country that ranked in the top ten of each of the three categories: (a) the percentage of people who donate in a typical month to charity, (b) volunteer time and (c) help a stranger.

This is much to gloat about, but is it possible that this positive trait covers up shameful statistics for the United States?

We are proud of the money and sweat equity we give to food panties. According to the non-profit Feeding America, the U.S. has 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs that provides food and services to people each year. But our pride is possible only because according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one in six people in America faces hunger. If wealth were distributed in the United States so that all people had the financial resources to feed themselves, then there would be no need for charity to be a source of food for our citizens. America would be less charitable.

More than 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness each year. The figure is nearly 580,000 each night. Thirty-five percent of the homeless population are families with children,  the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population. Twenty-three percent are U.S. military veterans. Yet hundreds of churches and other non-profit organizations run shelters for the homeless. Americans are indeed very charitable towards these organizations, but it is no substitute for a nation in which every citizen has sufficient income or wealth to have a roof over his or her head. We make charity possible by failing to insist that government fulfill its obligation to provide a basic standard of living for all Americans.

It is basically Republican politicians who stand in the way of providing a livable safety net for American citizens. They oppose: raising minimum wages, offering a guaranteed income, expanding Social Security and Medicare where necessary, fully funding health care for veterans, and providing even minimal health care for many poor people in states that resist Medicaid expansion. Who benefits from Republican obstinacy? Three sectors of our society:

1. American business, which pays lower taxes because we do not fully fund a safety net. At the same time, business brag about their charitable donations, even though they are far smaller than would be their fair share in providing a livable level of income for all Americans.
2. Churches and other religious organizations, who benefit from the holes in the safety net. Churches can take the lead in charitable enterprises. But if the government was taking care of all Americans, religious institutions would be largely stripped of their charitable functions. That in turn would likely be a disincentive for many Americans to join or remain members in religious organizations.
3. Wealthy people in the United States, who can brag ’til the cows home about how charitable they are, even though the amount that many give is far less than what would be their fair tax in a society that cared for its poor, its infirm, its children, and its senior citizens.

I previously wrote  about how Republicans are more charitable than Democrats and Europeans. They love to brag about it. They and the causes that they support receive ongoing adulation from Americans, particularly from mainstream media outlets. What is not said is that it’s all a good economic deal for Republicans. They are able to pay less and brag more. Regrettably, this may be too difficult a concept for most Americans to understand.

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This time of year it’s common for progressives to view Republicans as a bunch of Scrooges. But when it comes to charity, this simply is not true. Republicans are more generous in their charity giving than either Democrats in the United States or Europeans at large. Further evidence was gathered in a January, 2016 Occasional Planet survey of Americans.

As EthicsDaily.com reports, “Red states – Republican-voting states – are more generous than blue states – Democratic-voting states.” Many conservatives are aware of this disparity and like to crow about it – as if they are the truly compassionate ones. The problem with this contention is that it assumes that all compassion is shown through charity. Many Democrats, who well may contribute less to charities than conservatives do, look at compassion as being more than charity. For most democrats, helping those in need is one of several fundamental roles of government. They contend that government should have primary responsibility for redistributing incomes (and isn’t that in essence is what charity is) should best be done by the federal government because it is the most efficient, effectively targeted, and fair way to help others.

Republicans donate to charity at a higher level than Democrats and the strength of that giving by the GOP propels the U.S. to much higher figures that European Nations. As Investor’s Business Daily reports:

In no European economy are the people more generous with their own money than the people of the U.S. According to Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data, which have been thoughtfully assembled by Cato scholar Dan Mitchell, the total of Americans’ voluntary social spending reached 10.2% of GDP in 2009, the latest year for which numbers are available.

The only country that is remotely close in its generosity is the Netherlands, where the total was 6% of the nation’s economy. Only two other nations, Canada and the United Kingdom, exceeded 5%. The U.K. totaled 5.3% of GDP, Canada 5.1%.

Republicans have historically promoted more in the way of charitable giving. Their support of large charitable organizations such as traditional religious organizations and welfare organizations like the Red Cross reflect their commitment to trying to help those in need. But truth be told, what they offer to large charitable organization is often less than ten percent of what the federal government provides to address these issues. Most illustrative is an interview by St. Louis Public Radio’s Don Marsh and Congressman Todd Akin when he was running for reelection in 2010.

Akin talks about charity being the solution to providing adequate healthcare for the uninsured. He says, “You can’t cheat mathematics” as the undergirding of his argument. Unfortunately for him it appears that his facts are just not correct; not correct by a factor of 18.

Writing in Forbes Magazine, “Is Charity the Answer To Healthcare?” Carolyn McClanahan points out that in 2010 (the year in which Akin was interviewed), Americans gave a total of $22.83 billion in charity to healthcare. She goes on to state:

To provide coverage for the 50 million uninsured people in our country, based on our latest OECD rate of $7,960 per year, we would need about $398 billion. For charity to fund this, we would have to stop all other charitable pursuits, plus increase our charitable donations by another $108 billion per year.

The $398 billion is over 18 times the $23 billion that Mr. Akin thinks will provide health care for all the uninsured. And Mr. Akin said, “You can’t cheat mathematics.” He is by trade an engineer. I would say if he wanted to succeed in that field, he would have to use real numbers rather than the ones that many Republicans create to make often-invalid political arguments.

Can we say that, in reality, Democrats are eighteen times as charitable as Republicans; or that Europeans are eighteen times as charitable as Americans? That would clearly be a stretch. So while Republicans may give twice as much to charity as Democrats or Europeans, their math is fuzzy. Many of the “welfare states” in Western Europe address problems of poverty, education, and health care by giving the government primary responsibility for providing appropriate remedies. So, while many Americans may think that it is admirable of the country to give a great deal to charity; they might think twice about how much it really addresses fundamental needs. Fortunately there are other approaches, and they are available on a planet near you.

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