Americans Give Almost $300 Billion in Charity

Here are the highlights for me:

"Donors contributed an estimated $295.02 billion in 2006, a 1 percent increase when adjusted for inflation, up from $283.05 billion in 2005. Excluding donations for disaster relief, the total rose 3.2 percent, inflation-adjusted, according to an annual report released Monday by the Giving USA Foundation at Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy."

and to silence the inane but predictable chatter about the duplicitous designs of Big Capitalism and the Evil Military-Industrial Complex, there's this:

"Individuals gave a combined 75.6 percent of the total. With bequests, that rises to 83.4 percent."

and finally, from the rest of the world:

"Gaudiani said Americans give twice as much as the next most charitable country, according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation. In philanthropic giving as a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. ranked first at 1.7 percent. No. 2 Britain gave 0.73 percent, while France, with a 0.14 percent rate, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany."

Not that generousity and benevolence should necessarily be some kind of international contest but, still, this is telling. Now, why it is that America is so reviled by the rest of the world? Exactly where does the term "Great Satan" come in to play?

Europe needs to just shut up. And I really don't want to hear anything out of the French ever again. Unless it's "May I recommend the leg of lamb, monsieur."

Here's the article, from CNN via the AP.