Charity begins at home
I’ve been quite overwhelmed by the response from a recent sponsored question we featured about charity. Specifically, ‘What is the one thing you see in the world that leaves you so saddened you want to do something about it?’ We got well over 400 responses ranging from being saddened by poverty in third world countries to animal cruelty to genocide.
One of them was MADDIE, who had an interesting point:
I think it’s ridiculous that there are obscenely rich people in the world trying to venture into space when half the population didn’t eat anything today.
While Edxr641 was more concerned about people at home:
What saddens me the most is when I look around my own country, and my own suburb, and see people addicted to drugs, living on the streets, stealing to survive, etc and we, as a country send more money off shore than we do to help the poor in our own country.
With so many of us who have expressed our sadness about various things that go on in the world, it makes me realise how much compassion is out there.
Although it would be lovely to wait until we win lotto to make that huge donation, the fact is most of our numbers won’t come up (although I’ll still be buying the tickets just in case 
)
Some of us have already decided to make a difference, such as Quiet.Buck, who said:
People die every day so my SUV gets gas, so my butt gets moved from point A to point B for my own selfish reasons. In turn… I have closed down my automotive company, I have given up my Porsche, condo and 90% of my material items so far (still selling). And I am looking to now move into the woods and live as one with nature…
|S| had a great idea about incorporating giving charity while having a fun evening with her friends.
Last week, I decided to donate money to the next charity I saw. It just so happened to be Daffodil Day, the major fundraiser of the Cancer Council. I bought a few bouquets of gorgeous blooms, then gave them to a friend who was feeling a bit down. Talk about hitting two birds with one stone!
With all the sadness in the world, I think we all need to make sure we do things that will make a little difference to someone’s life. It might be donating to a favourite charity, or carrying an elderly neighbour’s heavy shopping bags home from the bus stop. Whatever it is, it’ll make this hectic, frazzled world of ours a better place. What charitable thing are you going to do this week?
Caitlin
Community Manager
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Well the other day I noticed this old man sitting on the ground right near my work. At lunch, I made an extra sandwich and gave it to him. He didn’t look particularly impressed (would probably have preferred money) but he seemed to be scoffing it down when I looked back.
Charity first begins in the heart …
The subject of charitable donations is complex. The small sums that most of us can and do give are unlikely to have much effect, even if everybody did the same. Governments take some of our earnings as tax and use some of this money to subsidise the “deserving” poor, but this too is somewhat unrealistic and many who should be helped are not. So my appraoch is not to make a direct monetary contribution but to work against the total elimination of poverty.
i do this in two related ways. Firstly I subscribe to an organization whose knowledge about the basic cause of poverty and efforts to eliminate it are worthwhile. These people are followers of one of the greatest economists of all time whose works are largely ignored today, although in 1879 when he started to publish them he was well recieved. His name is Henry George and what he explained is that poverty is doe to unequal opportunity to work and earn and this is associated with monopolies particularly in land and in its with-holding out of use for purposes of speculation. By introducing a tax on land values and reducing tax on earnings and production, George rightly claims that entepreneers would be able to compete with the “big” boys and both demand (due to reduced costs) and supply (due to lower taxation of incomes) would grow with a subsequent rise in production and greater use of our productive capacity. This has been tried in certain countries and in the state of Pennsylvania (Harrisberg + 14 other cities), with great success.
The second I help to fight poverty is to develop and write about the theory and analysis behind Georges idea. I have shown by simple and extreemly logical methods that in the short term, when taxation is directed from incomes to land values that the amount that the change stimulates the macroeconomy is roughly 3 times the stimulation that the income tax otherwise would. This may be contraversal but I can proove it.
So it seems to me that the heart can be later replaced by the head, when it comes to trying to help eliminate the squallor associated with poverty.
those look like the bands from twilight without the apple.