Caroline Baum reports some interesting figures for Bloomberg.com about the relatively puny contributions people have made to the US Bureau of the Public Debt:
Last year, the Treasury received more than $3 million in gifts, the biggest annual take since 1995’s $7.3 million. ...
Public Law 87-58, “Gifts to Reduce the Public Debt,” was passed on June 27, 1961, in response to a generous bequest of $20 million dollar from an estate. ... Since then the single largest gift was $3.5 million in 1992, also a bequest from an individual’s estate.
In the first 10 months of fiscal 2010, which ends today, Treasury received $2.7 million in gifts.
For all the handwringing that goes on about the growth of deficit spending, you'd think the numbers would show a little more civic-mindedness, but they don't. Compared with giving to private charities, this tells you all you need to know about where people think their money will do the most good, and it sure isn't the government.
Boston College's Center on Wealth and Philanthropy reports the latest numbers:
Individual charitable giving in 2009 amounted to $217.3 billion . . . $228.5 billion total in 2008. ...
The American people still believe there is a huge need out there which government spending through forced taxation is not meeting, and despite that taxation they open their wallets to address it. But what should disturb more people is the recent decline in giving due to the financial meltdown, a casualty of this country's war on the middle class:
[T]he total decline in inflation adjusted dollars [was] $25.3 billion between 2007 and 2009.
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