The Working Poor Are Different From You and Me

It’s pretty sobering, isn’t it, to read that the most charitable people in the United States are the working poor. I mean, they don’t exactly have a lot of spare cash lying around. Not like some people I know.

But then neither do your average middle-class homeowner sup to their ears in mortgage debt. They say: “I don't have enough money to spare,” according to John Stossel. And of course, they (make that we) don’t. We already spent it on our houses, our cars, our shopping, ourselves... You get the point.

Actually it is religious people who give most to charity. First of all they give to their church, and then they give to a lot of other places too. Here are the stats.

1. Religious people give more than non-religious people.
2. The working poor give more than the middle class.
3. The rich give more than the middle class.
4. The working poor give more than the non-working poor.
5. Conservatives give more than liberals.

John Stossel ran a test. He had the Salvation Army put a bucket outside a store in Sious Falls, South Dakota, and another one outside a store in San Francisco. What were the results?

Well, even though people in Sioux Falls make, on average, half as much money as people in San Francisco, and even though the San Francisco location was much busier -- three times as many people were within reach of the bucket -- by the end of the second day, the Sioux Falls bucket held twice as much money.

It’s good to know stuff like that.