If you're making less than $40k per year and living in SF, you're pretty justified in feeling stretched. Putting away as much money as possible in a 401(k) makes sense, and it sounds like you are finding ways to give on top of everything else. I wouldn't feel too bad about yourself! You're miles ahead of where I was when I was in a much more comfortable position.
As much as "grubby, cold-hearted" cash really is often underrated - working in a grocery store, I do wanna emphasize that Food Abundance is something we did already hit long ago in the USA, and the failure to follow up with efficient logistics so no one actually starves is quite embarrassing. The location I work at tracks the dollar value of all our donations, and iirc we're now at over $1m worth of food donated annually...
...which sounds impressive, unless you work there and see the astounding amount of stuff we just end up throwing away. Some of it is genuinely just difficult - highly perishable stuff like ready-to-eat salads is tricky to get to the end consumer before it expires*. But the majority results from simple carelessness, the luxury of not having to treat food like a luxury. Failing to check dates when stocking (FIFO vs LIFO, aka "rotation"), destroying packaging with sloppy knifework, dropping pallets off a forklift...or just CBA to remove the one bad apple from a bunch, while there's still time to do so, cause everyone feels overworked and undermotivated. So much simpler to just toss it in the bin. (Sometimes people *include* the rotten stuff among the other donations, which...yeah...there's a reason my company has an infamous reputation for low-quality high-effort donations.) I'd estimate we could be diverting at least 25% more salvageable product with better practices - and financially, that's a superlative tax classification too, vs marking things as spillage.
So cutting a check helps, and I do think there's value in volunteering with food distribution at least once - typical Americans are remarkably ignorant about how any of our food actually gets to the plate, and that's valuable perspective. But I think we did jump the gun a bit culturally/mentality wise, where food is often treated as "too cheap to meter", without actually quite being so in practice. Lotsa opportunities to do good, and more efficiently...
*non-prepared stuff, raw ingredients, can often be processed into mass batch recipes where the quality of individual ingredients doesn't matter so much. Have seen some truly impressive at-scale kitchen magic from e.g. Meals on Wheels. Even cracked eggs can be pasteurized and mass-scrambled/hardboiled, to salubrious effect. But already prepared stuff...well, you can't really disassemble a chicken Caesar salad into its component parts to reuse in other things, and it can't be frozen for long-term storage like just-chicken could be. Just another example of the life lesson that Convenience Is Expensive.
Pioneering a sliding scale model for providing intensive reading support tutoring to children with reading disabilities, this charity is making a real
difference one child at a time. In a city so cursed with horrible schools and consequently high levels of crime, this program could not be more important.
The costs of losing a child to the criminal underbelly is difficult to fathom, especially in relation to one that remains vital and productive. An insane percentage of convicted felons is functionally illiterate. This is just inexcusable in our rich society.
Seems to me the massively undervalued piece of the reciprocity cycle in our culture is who exactly we trade with. Everything is so commoditized and depersonalized. Many of us only think about doing good and right with our economic choices via philanthropy alone.
But choosing where we spend and whom we enrich with our gift spending is just as critical as choosing to whom we give our holidays gift, economically speaking. If we keep supporting primarily Jeff Bezos and Chinese electronics factories with forced labor policies, what kind of world are we asking for really?
Just wanted to let you know this was the kick in the ass I needed to set up a yearly $10k (+$20k match by my employer) donation to GiveWell. Thanks for that.
Thanks for this article! There are a lot of local politicians that vote moderately but advertise aggressively enough to really push me away. It hasn't occurred to me to simply let someone know "I will support you; you don't need to be extreme right/left" and that such an exchange could actually change a platform.
In addition to PTO, I recommend supporting your local Y! They're really great, and in a way, it's like donating to the museum because you personally go to the museum, but the programs have a much larger-reaching impact than your personal visit through youth engagement, community for disconnected populations, and of course physical health & wellness. (Long term cohort studies of the Y's national diabetes prevention program have proven its impact!)
Over the past few years, I've been thinking a lot about political hobbyism. When I was younger, I enjoyed debate club quite a bit & met my fiance through club- it's a great hobby! However, over college & after, the people that want to engage in debate were almost without exception taking things far more seriously than us dumb high schoolers trying to determine the semantics of cake-cut-in-half (and the attitude was admittedly infectious). I've always tried to recommend to folks that are upset about the national state to simply write a letter to their local politicians with their viewpoints, or join a campaign, or x number of other things, but it always fell on deaf ears (ironically, aside from my fiance, whom is very involved). It didn't occur to me until 2020 that people were emotionally serious but not politically serious, I suppose? Events were harsh enough that it was really time for folks to step away from the news and regroup-either focusing on self-care or if they were well, going out and helping- but I was told over and over "no, I need to read this, it's really important" about topics that the same people completely forgot about after they left the national news. (The two that immediately come to mind are the Floyd murder & that whole thing with celebrities flocking to social media with their opinions about gender healthcare/expression/science.)
I don't really know what to do with this information, though. I really enjoy hobby debate (as long as no one feels any more hurt by it than they would losing a board game), I want to learn and generate ideas, and I do want to make a difference. I haven't been sure how much to separate these, or if I should aim to disengage more with political hobbyist-style activity. Having the opportunity to engage with Slow Boring in a way that is all of the above has been really great.
*I should note, my personal engagement making a difference is much more long term with increased knowledge having impact here and there on how my fiance and I will make various organization/ political decisions in the future, so I qualify that as a small percentage of what I'm doing here vs. engaging as a hobby- though not nearly as small as most types of daily engagement, as I've already learned a lot of policy and districting concepts/ideas/ongoing implementations etc.
If your approach to giving is "I will give a fixed amount/percentage of my annual income to effective charities xyz" then it's easy to justify local giving, or giving to panhandlers, as valuable on the margin. This is only because you've restricted yourself to giving a fixed amount effectively, though--the margin of interest should still be "could this money have been better-spent," and the answer is yes.
As a religious person who has always given to charities, it is always interesting to read secular arguments for altruistic behavior. Thanks for this column!
It's a shame that the CARES Act tax code amendment to allow everyone to deduct charitable contributions has expired. Itemized deductions are mostly only worthwhile for property owners.
Isn't the observation that discourse participants tend to be miserable kind of inconsistent with the "political hobbyism"? People don't participate in hobbies or watch sports that they hate.
Plenty of people do like watching sports *teams* they hate in hopes of seeing them lose. It helps to explain why teams like the Dallas Cowboys and Notre Dame football get an excessive amount of top broadcasting coverage--it's not just the fans that tune in, but also their foes.
I volunteer at a food bank/pantry and spend most of my time doing stock-boy types of things so let me strongly second Matt's point. Any donation is great and we are thankful for whatever you provide, but if you have a choice, money is far better than food donations. Like 10:1 better. Again, I'm really not criticizing people who donate food (again: thanks!) but quality control, labor demands for small, assorted items, stopping other work to receive those donations etc do present some challenges compared to buying food in bulk. (Also: money doesn't expire.)
Lots of organisations, especially ones that are non-profit or "cause-driven" underinvest in their own administration and management. Sometimes this results in heavy paperwork burdens on front-line staff, sometimes it means that accounts aren't being done properly and an unscrupulous person is able to steal money for years before being noticed, sometimes it means a handful of overworked and undervalued staff and volunteers keep everything going and then one of them get a new job or retires (or gets ill or dies) and the organisation collapses.
Donating money that is earmarked specifically for administration for an organisation in this situation is great: it can leverage money from general funds and will sometimes force reconsideration of what their admin operation looks like if someone is specifically donating to it.
Bigger non-profits are often admin-heavy and don't need this: but small ones are usually admin-light and really need one or two more central staffers to keep an eye on each other and to get everything done properly rather than in a last minute rush.
"...weirdly valorize victimhood". When the dynamic and message in society is "you're either the oppressed or the oppressor; the victim or the victimizer", It's not surprising that many people would rather be the former. Victimhood also provides all kinds of excuses for why you're not happy and/or successful, and makes you "special".
The narrative in entertainment for decades has been the underdog, the victim, the sufferer is the hero, with that suffering directly tied to their hero status. Effectively, they are the hero because they suffer, because of things that happen to them, rather than things they do.
I think the "crisis of meaning" is much less about the "waning of religion" and more about the relentless centering of wealth (at all costs) rather than any kind of reasonable focus on being a good person. Society gives far too much play to wealth and the wealthy. Chasing the dollar at the expense of all else is a surefire recipe for a meaningless life.
If people are looking for volunteering-type things to do rather than spending-money-type things to do, then I can strongly recommend getting involved in a political party at the grassroots level. Delivering leaflets and knocking on doors is pretty good exercise, there's lots of basic organisational stuff that people with decent managerial skills can get stuck into. If you can reliably book rooms for meetings and get all the official paperwork (agendas, minutes, etc) done correctly and on time, or you can chair according to Robert's Rules of Order, or you can do a set of books and track where the money went for a small organisation with a few thousand dollars, then your local precinct will kill to keep you.
I rocked up with a specific set of skills - the ability to stay fair and unbiased even when I have strong personal opinions, the organisational skills to get paperwork done to a deadline, and the knowledge of how to count votes under various electoral systems. Ten years on, I'm currently in charge of an (internal) election in my party for the head of the party in England (this is the organisational head, not the political head, and there is an England head and a superior UK head).
There are hundreds of jobs like this, jobs that require middle-class office-worker skills, jobs that routinely get done by volunteers because no-one donates money to pay people to do admin, but without which the parties would cease to function.
[As an aside, these are the reasons why it is so hard to create a new political party even in countries that aren't the US where it is more possible; you need hundreds of the sort of minor functionary that I am to have a democratic party. You can have an autocratic party much more quickly and simply, which is how Macron did it.]
Great article, Matt. Though aren't most cases for doing good ultimately selfish? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warm-glow_giving. Embrace selfishness and give charitably!
If you're making less than $40k per year and living in SF, you're pretty justified in feeling stretched. Putting away as much money as possible in a 401(k) makes sense, and it sounds like you are finding ways to give on top of everything else. I wouldn't feel too bad about yourself! You're miles ahead of where I was when I was in a much more comfortable position.
As much as "grubby, cold-hearted" cash really is often underrated - working in a grocery store, I do wanna emphasize that Food Abundance is something we did already hit long ago in the USA, and the failure to follow up with efficient logistics so no one actually starves is quite embarrassing. The location I work at tracks the dollar value of all our donations, and iirc we're now at over $1m worth of food donated annually...
...which sounds impressive, unless you work there and see the astounding amount of stuff we just end up throwing away. Some of it is genuinely just difficult - highly perishable stuff like ready-to-eat salads is tricky to get to the end consumer before it expires*. But the majority results from simple carelessness, the luxury of not having to treat food like a luxury. Failing to check dates when stocking (FIFO vs LIFO, aka "rotation"), destroying packaging with sloppy knifework, dropping pallets off a forklift...or just CBA to remove the one bad apple from a bunch, while there's still time to do so, cause everyone feels overworked and undermotivated. So much simpler to just toss it in the bin. (Sometimes people *include* the rotten stuff among the other donations, which...yeah...there's a reason my company has an infamous reputation for low-quality high-effort donations.) I'd estimate we could be diverting at least 25% more salvageable product with better practices - and financially, that's a superlative tax classification too, vs marking things as spillage.
So cutting a check helps, and I do think there's value in volunteering with food distribution at least once - typical Americans are remarkably ignorant about how any of our food actually gets to the plate, and that's valuable perspective. But I think we did jump the gun a bit culturally/mentality wise, where food is often treated as "too cheap to meter", without actually quite being so in practice. Lotsa opportunities to do good, and more efficiently...
*non-prepared stuff, raw ingredients, can often be processed into mass batch recipes where the quality of individual ingredients doesn't matter so much. Have seen some truly impressive at-scale kitchen magic from e.g. Meals on Wheels. Even cracked eggs can be pasteurized and mass-scrambled/hardboiled, to salubrious effect. But already prepared stuff...well, you can't really disassemble a chicken Caesar salad into its component parts to reuse in other things, and it can't be frozen for long-term storage like just-chicken could be. Just another example of the life lesson that Convenience Is Expensive.
Shameless plug for an amazing Philadelphia-based charity, Reading Allowed.
https://www.readingallowed.org/
Pioneering a sliding scale model for providing intensive reading support tutoring to children with reading disabilities, this charity is making a real
difference one child at a time. In a city so cursed with horrible schools and consequently high levels of crime, this program could not be more important.
The costs of losing a child to the criminal underbelly is difficult to fathom, especially in relation to one that remains vital and productive. An insane percentage of convicted felons is functionally illiterate. This is just inexcusable in our rich society.
Great perspective, thank you!
Seems to me the massively undervalued piece of the reciprocity cycle in our culture is who exactly we trade with. Everything is so commoditized and depersonalized. Many of us only think about doing good and right with our economic choices via philanthropy alone.
But choosing where we spend and whom we enrich with our gift spending is just as critical as choosing to whom we give our holidays gift, economically speaking. If we keep supporting primarily Jeff Bezos and Chinese electronics factories with forced labor policies, what kind of world are we asking for really?
Happy Holidays y’all
Just wanted to let you know this was the kick in the ass I needed to set up a yearly $10k (+$20k match by my employer) donation to GiveWell. Thanks for that.
Thanks for this article! There are a lot of local politicians that vote moderately but advertise aggressively enough to really push me away. It hasn't occurred to me to simply let someone know "I will support you; you don't need to be extreme right/left" and that such an exchange could actually change a platform.
In addition to PTO, I recommend supporting your local Y! They're really great, and in a way, it's like donating to the museum because you personally go to the museum, but the programs have a much larger-reaching impact than your personal visit through youth engagement, community for disconnected populations, and of course physical health & wellness. (Long term cohort studies of the Y's national diabetes prevention program have proven its impact!)
Over the past few years, I've been thinking a lot about political hobbyism. When I was younger, I enjoyed debate club quite a bit & met my fiance through club- it's a great hobby! However, over college & after, the people that want to engage in debate were almost without exception taking things far more seriously than us dumb high schoolers trying to determine the semantics of cake-cut-in-half (and the attitude was admittedly infectious). I've always tried to recommend to folks that are upset about the national state to simply write a letter to their local politicians with their viewpoints, or join a campaign, or x number of other things, but it always fell on deaf ears (ironically, aside from my fiance, whom is very involved). It didn't occur to me until 2020 that people were emotionally serious but not politically serious, I suppose? Events were harsh enough that it was really time for folks to step away from the news and regroup-either focusing on self-care or if they were well, going out and helping- but I was told over and over "no, I need to read this, it's really important" about topics that the same people completely forgot about after they left the national news. (The two that immediately come to mind are the Floyd murder & that whole thing with celebrities flocking to social media with their opinions about gender healthcare/expression/science.)
I don't really know what to do with this information, though. I really enjoy hobby debate (as long as no one feels any more hurt by it than they would losing a board game), I want to learn and generate ideas, and I do want to make a difference. I haven't been sure how much to separate these, or if I should aim to disengage more with political hobbyist-style activity. Having the opportunity to engage with Slow Boring in a way that is all of the above has been really great.
*I should note, my personal engagement making a difference is much more long term with increased knowledge having impact here and there on how my fiance and I will make various organization/ political decisions in the future, so I qualify that as a small percentage of what I'm doing here vs. engaging as a hobby- though not nearly as small as most types of daily engagement, as I've already learned a lot of policy and districting concepts/ideas/ongoing implementations etc.
If your approach to giving is "I will give a fixed amount/percentage of my annual income to effective charities xyz" then it's easy to justify local giving, or giving to panhandlers, as valuable on the margin. This is only because you've restricted yourself to giving a fixed amount effectively, though--the margin of interest should still be "could this money have been better-spent," and the answer is yes.
As a religious person who has always given to charities, it is always interesting to read secular arguments for altruistic behavior. Thanks for this column!
If you want to convey this point to EAs/rationalists, you can send them to https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3p3CYauiX8oLjmwRF/purchase-fuzzies-and-utilons-separately.
It's a shame that the CARES Act tax code amendment to allow everyone to deduct charitable contributions has expired. Itemized deductions are mostly only worthwhile for property owners.
Isn't the observation that discourse participants tend to be miserable kind of inconsistent with the "political hobbyism"? People don't participate in hobbies or watch sports that they hate.
The more hopeless the team, the more fervent and miserable the fans. I should know, I root for the Mets.
Plenty of people do like watching sports *teams* they hate in hopes of seeing them lose. It helps to explain why teams like the Dallas Cowboys and Notre Dame football get an excessive amount of top broadcasting coverage--it's not just the fans that tune in, but also their foes.
I volunteer at a food bank/pantry and spend most of my time doing stock-boy types of things so let me strongly second Matt's point. Any donation is great and we are thankful for whatever you provide, but if you have a choice, money is far better than food donations. Like 10:1 better. Again, I'm really not criticizing people who donate food (again: thanks!) but quality control, labor demands for small, assorted items, stopping other work to receive those donations etc do present some challenges compared to buying food in bulk. (Also: money doesn't expire.)
Lots of organisations, especially ones that are non-profit or "cause-driven" underinvest in their own administration and management. Sometimes this results in heavy paperwork burdens on front-line staff, sometimes it means that accounts aren't being done properly and an unscrupulous person is able to steal money for years before being noticed, sometimes it means a handful of overworked and undervalued staff and volunteers keep everything going and then one of them get a new job or retires (or gets ill or dies) and the organisation collapses.
Donating money that is earmarked specifically for administration for an organisation in this situation is great: it can leverage money from general funds and will sometimes force reconsideration of what their admin operation looks like if someone is specifically donating to it.
Bigger non-profits are often admin-heavy and don't need this: but small ones are usually admin-light and really need one or two more central staffers to keep an eye on each other and to get everything done properly rather than in a last minute rush.
"...weirdly valorize victimhood". When the dynamic and message in society is "you're either the oppressed or the oppressor; the victim or the victimizer", It's not surprising that many people would rather be the former. Victimhood also provides all kinds of excuses for why you're not happy and/or successful, and makes you "special".
The narrative in entertainment for decades has been the underdog, the victim, the sufferer is the hero, with that suffering directly tied to their hero status. Effectively, they are the hero because they suffer, because of things that happen to them, rather than things they do.
I think the "crisis of meaning" is much less about the "waning of religion" and more about the relentless centering of wealth (at all costs) rather than any kind of reasonable focus on being a good person. Society gives far too much play to wealth and the wealthy. Chasing the dollar at the expense of all else is a surefire recipe for a meaningless life.
If people are looking for volunteering-type things to do rather than spending-money-type things to do, then I can strongly recommend getting involved in a political party at the grassroots level. Delivering leaflets and knocking on doors is pretty good exercise, there's lots of basic organisational stuff that people with decent managerial skills can get stuck into. If you can reliably book rooms for meetings and get all the official paperwork (agendas, minutes, etc) done correctly and on time, or you can chair according to Robert's Rules of Order, or you can do a set of books and track where the money went for a small organisation with a few thousand dollars, then your local precinct will kill to keep you.
I rocked up with a specific set of skills - the ability to stay fair and unbiased even when I have strong personal opinions, the organisational skills to get paperwork done to a deadline, and the knowledge of how to count votes under various electoral systems. Ten years on, I'm currently in charge of an (internal) election in my party for the head of the party in England (this is the organisational head, not the political head, and there is an England head and a superior UK head).
There are hundreds of jobs like this, jobs that require middle-class office-worker skills, jobs that routinely get done by volunteers because no-one donates money to pay people to do admin, but without which the parties would cease to function.
[As an aside, these are the reasons why it is so hard to create a new political party even in countries that aren't the US where it is more possible; you need hundreds of the sort of minor functionary that I am to have a democratic party. You can have an autocratic party much more quickly and simply, which is how Macron did it.]
Came to similar logic for buying swag and donating a bit to public radio. I like it so I should probably financially support it some.