I ran across this in the July 10th, 2008 issue of the Liberator. The sources are a Giving USA report and other related media coverage. I however was unable to find the report on their website.

According to Giving USA’s latest report:

• 2007’s record $306.4 billion in charitable giving is a rise of about 1 percent from the previous year, adjusted for inflation.
• Individuals accounted for the largest share by far. Indeed, most charitable giving — $229 billion or about 75 percent total – comes from individuals.
• About two-thirds of households with incomes under $100,000 give to charity.
• Half of individual giving went to religious groups. Religious congregations received one-third of the $306.4 billion, an increase of 2 percent from last year and a record dollar amount.
  
• As economic woes have increased worldwide, Americans are responding by redirecting some of their giving. Donations to international aid, environmental and human-services groups rose the most in 2007.
• Donations to international charities showed the single largest gain — a rise of about 13 percent.
• On average Americans gives 2.3 percent of their disposable income to charitable causes.
• Americans rank first in the world in giving as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), at 1.7 percent, followed by Great Britain (.73 percent). (These are 2006 figures.)

And this is after being taxed 50+ percent by federal, state and local governments. People ask how possibly could a free society take care of those in need… this is how. Just like it is now and was in the past. Real charity.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22148

In May, the Commonwealth Fund issued its latest comparison of the U.S. medical system with five other wealthy nations’ systems: Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Great Britain.

Predictably, the study begins: “Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms.”

I was immediately suspicious, considering the loaded study by the World Health Organization seven years ago. (I wrote about it last week.)

Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies, summed up what’s wrong with the study: “The report does nothing more than reveal which nation does the worst job of satisfying the subjective preferences of the people who conducted this study.”
Fans of the Canadian system should note that Canada ranked fifth out of six and did worse than the U.S. in many ways.

I love how this and the WHO report go out of their way to make the US system look bad without it looking so bad as to be unbelievable. Since most people only read the headlines or the overall ‘rank’ assigned it makes it easy to sneak the truth by the public. It’s interesting how they weight having computers to print medication lists the same as receiving preventive care. Equity doesn’t go into detail as to what ’sick’ means when people don’t go to the doctor when sick. Lots of people don’t go when sick because it’s not necessary. How many of those in the UK (who’s 1st in equity) go just because they can? I’ve read that the elderly will make appointments because they are lonely and in some UK hospitals they’ve had to introduce a small copay to keep them from wasting the doctors time. Freedom will drive down health care and insurance prices and keep our quality up… not more government regulation.

It’s the 4th of July. The United States’ Independence day. The day our founding fathers adopted the Lee Resolution declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. I recommend all Americans and non-Americans alike to take some time and read Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the US Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the US Constitution and the US Bill of Rights. If you have some more free time there’s also The Federalist Papers and On Liberty.

Freedom, liberty are not simply things to celebrate one day a year… but ideas which must be practiced and upheld every minute of every day by and for each and every individual. It requires great will and stamina and unfortunately sometimes blood. But it is an incredibly worthy cause and I wish to thank all those who have fought and are fighting the good fight for their fellow countrymen… their fellow man.

On July 2nd, 1776 the Second Continental Congress passed the Lee Resolution to declare it’s independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. It was later adopted and formally declared on July 4th. You can read more here.