Who cares

Thomas Sowell:

More frightening than any particular beliefs or policies is an utter lack of any sense of a need to test those beliefs and policies against hard evidence. Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts, but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.
One of today's most pervasive political visions is that liberals are compassionate and conservatives are less caring. Liberals advocate "forgiveness" of loans to Third World countries, a "living wage" for the poor and a "safety net" for all. But these are all government policies -- not individual acts of compassion. The actual empirical consequences of such policies are of remarkably little interest to their advocates. Depending on those consequences, there may be good reasons to oppose them. Being for or against these policies may not tell us who is compassionate or caring and who is not.
A new book, titled "Who Really Cares" by Arthur C. Brooks examines the actual behavior of liberals and conservatives in donating their own time, money or blood for the benefit of others. It is remarkable that beliefs on this subject should have become conventional, if not set in concrete, for decades before anyone bothered to check these beliefs against facts.
What are the facts? People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than self-identified liberals. Conservatives donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes. And it is not that conservatives have more money. Liberal families average 6 percent higher incomes than conservative families.
You may recall a flap during the 2000 election campaign when the fact came out that Al Gore donated a smaller percentage of his income to charity than the national average. That was perfectly consistent with his liberalism. So is the fact that most of the states that voted for John Kerry during the 2004 election donated a lower percentage of their incomes to charity than the states that voted for George W. Bush.
Conservatives not only donate more money to charity than liberals, conservatives also volunteer more time. More conservatives than liberals donate blood.
According to Mr. Brooks: "If liberals and moderates gave blood at the same rate as conservatives, the blood supply of the United States would jump about 45 percent."
...

Liberals think donating to HHS through the payment of taxes should be enough. That is one reason why they support higher taxes to make themselves donate more. Liberals thin that the Department of Health and Human Services is the best vehicle for helping others. Conservatives have found a better way to be generous with their own money rather than relying of Other People's Money going to the government.