Curiously, Phil doesn't say where he got his data or how he calculated his index. He's just making it up.

How many ways does one rebut this lie? Perhaps one can begin by looking at http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/62.html to notice that allmost all those "generous" red states are actually net beneficiary states in federal tax transfer, a much larger sum of money than the little bit of money that Phil is talking about.

Second, you would show what this "generosity index" refers to? I am highly suspicious? Is it based on GuideStar data from 990s? Does it refelct all non-profits? How do we know where the donors live?
Are the data biased by including religious organizations, do...

Curiously, Phil doesn't say where he got his data or how he calculated his index. He's just making it up.

How many ways does one rebut this lie? Perhaps one can begin by looking at http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/62.html to notice that allmost all those "generous" red states are actually net beneficiary states in federal tax transfer, a much larger sum of money than the little bit of money that Phil is talking about.

Second, you would show what this "generosity index" refers to? I am highly suspicious? Is it based on GuideStar data from 990s? Does it refelct all non-profits? How do we know where the donors live?
Are the data biased by including religious organizations, donations to which are not actual donations when they support one's own cultural services?

Just a few questions before we buy this unsupported assertion.

The Generosity Index was calculated and reported by The Catalogue For Philanthropy, whose main purpose as far as I can tell is to shame wealthy New Englanders into donating more to charities. It is Republican partisans who are putting this red state vs. blue state spin on the index.

The Index is based on the difference between the "Having Rank" and the "Giving Rank". The Having Rank is average per capita income; the Giving Rank is the average charitable donation reported to the IRS (by people who itemize their tax deductions). The contributions of people who donate to charities but do not take a tax deduction would...

The Generosity Index was calculated and reported by The Catalogue For Philanthropy, whose main purpose as far as I can tell is to shame wealthy New Englanders into donating more to charities. It is Republican partisans who are putting this red state vs. blue state spin on the index.

The Index is based on the difference between the "Having Rank" and the "Giving Rank". The Having Rank is average per capita income; the Giving Rank is the average charitable donation reported to the IRS (by people who itemize their tax deductions). The contributions of people who donate to charities but do not take a tax deduction would not be included in the calculations of the Generosity Index.

Here is what I would ask Phil Valentine if he were here on Clipmarks:

1. How can you make conclusions about an individual trait (Republican vs. Democrat) based on data aggregated at the STATE level? Not only is the data aggregated at the state level, but those people who are more likely to itemize their charitable deductions are usually high-income people. So what the GI is essentially doing is comparing the charitable donations of the high-income residents of each state. Do we know if the relatively stingy rich people in Massachusetts are Democrats? Do we know if the relatively generous rich people in Mississippi are Republicans? No, we don't that for a fact at all. In fact, I suspect that a majority of rich people in blue and red states are Republicans.

2. There is an additional problem that the CFP uses so many rankings--the Generosity Index is a ranking of the difference between two other rankings. It would have been better if they had just showed average charitable donations as a percentage of average income. The red states would still come out as more generous but I suspect the differences would not be as stark as the rankings, which can blow out of proportion trivial differences.