A Christmas thought

[Jerome Scuggs]

Sure you can give 1 dollar, 1 time.

or 10 if it's ramen

4 if it's cup ramen

[Verthanthi]

The world's problems will never be solved by one person giving one dollar and you are foolish to believe as much.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't give the dollar.

As towards Face's comment, there are places you can research charities (I can't think of any off hand, but google could find one, I'm sure). I know there are some in the range of 80-90%.

[Cylor]

The world's problems will never be solved by one person giving one dollar and you are foolish to believe as much.

[kthx]

Letting people die is the humane thing to do. I mean if everyone lived, there wouldn't be enough food to feed the entire world. Wars are natures way of keeping our planets population down. So are homeless people.

Why do people give money to homeless people anyways, I tell em to go get a fucking job, and god help me if they try to clean my fucking window with their filthy rags.

[Pummel]

[Subjugation]

I have to admit, I am cheap as fuck now. I almost never give money away, except to political and social causes that I consider extremely valuable to the community.

About 5 years ago, I used to always give my spare change to street beggars, but once I started keeping track of my monthly expenses, I had an epiphany: generosity is only admirable if you can afford it. Otherwise, you're selling yourself and your family out in order to benefit a complete stranger. And I think that's a personality trait best described as either ignorant, or pathetic---but definitely not admirable.

Every single dollar adds up. It's not just some abstract cliche, it's reality. And when you're as broke as I am, and you pay CLOSE attention to your personal finances, you realize that if you are middle class or lower, and don't have good medical insurance or have family with money, you are only one major accident away from being homeless---or at the very least, bankrupt. It makes way more sense for me to save that dollar in my "in-case-shit-happens" fund than to give it away.

[Zeebu]

First of all,

one string of rice

what is a string of rice?

i dont like those commercials and stuff either. why does only 83 cents of my dollar go to those families? why can't they have the entire dollar? you suck at giving. give me a place where i can send them my dollar, the entire thing.

yeah

[Facetious]

I'm 90% sure the Salvation Army has been known to deny clothes to unwed mothers in small towns. In addition, I find it extremely hard to believe that one dollar will really go to five meals. Maybe the money allocated towards food works that way (although it's still hard to believe), but who pays all the desk workers? My dad got a call the other day from some dude asking for money to help the families of police officers that had died in the line of duty.

dad> how much money goes to the families?
dude> all of your money goes to the charity, sir!
dad> so you don't get paid?
dude> oh no, I get paid
dad> who pays you
dude> well, your donations
dad> well, what percentage of my money goes to pay you, your boss, etc
dude> 63%

Only 37 percent of his dollar would have gone to the families. That's fucked. I can't help but imagine Salvation Army is very similar, and, thus, those figures are insanely inflated. I certainly am all for donating to charity if I had any money (which I literally don't) but I certainly don't trust huge Christian bureaucratic organizations with my (nonexistent) money.

On a lighter note, I did once donate to Salvation Army because the dude at the bucket was hilarious. Instead of saying anything, he'd grunt like a caveman, first like he was happy, then if you walked past him, he sounded disappointed. I asked him how he figured that out, and he said he tried a whole bunch of different ways, and that made him tons more money than ringing the bell.

[Galleleo]

Thing is about all these 1 dollar a day, or only 5 dollar a day, etc. that it all sounds nice and low but if you have to give it everyday, you have to give 365 dollars a year. Sure you can give 1 dollar, 1 time. But that only feeds someone 1 time.

I currently donate about 100 euro a year to charity (all sorts) and I can barely afford that, let alone 300+ euro a year.

[Liquid Blue]

I didn't write this, a friend showed it to me from the rpgfan boards, and I thought you guys might want to see it as well.

When somebody mentions changing the world for the better, people hear it and associate it instinctively with a better world. It's a common, basic principle of thought that we are all aware of. Cure for cancer, world hunger ending? Sure, we all know the drill.

How many people stop and seriously think about what bettering the world is?

It isn't an over-night miracle cure that changes the world. Quite frankly, that would be a very bad thing. Economies would fluctuate erratically, monetary values would alter radically, the world would in essence, have a new problem by solving the old one. That is what the fact of the matter is. To truly change the world, there is only one way to do it.

One person, one grain of sand, one string of rice, one atomic molecule at a time. A blanket statement and a universal problem solver will not fix the world. Nor can one, ten, or even a hundred people solve the entire world. The solution for these matters is a task force, and by such thought, The Salvation Army was brought about.

These are the warriors of virtue that better the world many people at a time in their own way. When you see The Salvation Army, what's one dollar out of your pocket when The Salvation Army has the means to convert that one dollar into a meal for five people? Ten dollars to feed sixty people?

Consider what sixty people really is. Your house, your neighbor, your neighbor's neighbor, averaging 4 people per house hold, that is about 12-15 houses of an entire family that can be fed off of ten dollars. Go outside now, look at your street. Count the houses and the people in them down your entire block.

Consider that one person could feed all of those people. Now consider that a grocery store for example, that I used to work at, averages about 2000 people in a given day, possibly much more in larger chains. Now consider that of those 2000 people, about 90 of them will donate money to The Salvation Army. Consider if every one of those 2000 people could shell out a mere one dollar. $2000 in a single day can feed over 10,000 people. Now consider that a chain such as Ralph's grocery, where I used to work, can average over 16,000 people in a given week thanks to Weekend shopping. If each one of those people would give ONE dollar, that is 95,000 that would not go hungry one night. Averaging two meals, that is nearly 50,000 people that would not go hungry for an entire day.

Now consider this is one store, in one week, of one business chain that has over 250 stores in california. That is over Twenty Three Million meals from one state in one week, if every person could donate a single dollar per trip. In a given month, that is 95,000,000 meals. In one year, that is 1,140,000,000 meals, from one chain of stores, in one state, for one dollar per person.

But they don't donate. They don't give to charities. They do not help the world.

The world will not better itself unless each grain of sand does its part, one person at a time, from a single dollar.

Think twice before you ignore The Salvation Army this holiday season.

Thanks.