A commitment to giving
In the early months of 2020, two things happened in conjunction: I began reading Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save, which discusses effective altruism and charitable giving; and I learned that my late uncle Thomas “Gil” Proctor had left me approximately $37,000 in his will. Influenced by Singer’s arguments, I committed to donating the entirety of that 37K to effective charities at home and abroad.
Singer’s book is free to download at the website for The Life You Can Save, and I encourage everyone to read it. But for a succinct introduction to the book’s arguments in favor of effective altruism, here is Singer’s 17-minute TED Talk, which I hope you will watch.
As is often the case, I find Singer’s logical arguments quite compelling. (It was upon reading his book Animal Liberation some 10+ years ago that I learned about factory farming and committed to being a vegetarian, which I have remained to this day.) Thanks to The Life You Can Save, I am now convinced that those like me—an American with a comfortable income and an absolute lack of want—should engage in substantially greater charitable giving to help those in extreme poverty, and that such giving should be done with an emphasis on effectiveness (researching how many lives per dollar you can save or meaningfully improve) and fairness (refusing to favor people in one’s more affluent city or country at the expense of equally valuable lives facing abject poverty overseas).
In addition to giving away the 37K from my uncle, I have also taken the pledge at thelifeyoucansave.org and formally committed to donating 5% of my pre-tax income in 2021. This exceeds the site’s calculated goal of 1% of my $50,000 income, but since I typically gave more than $500 per year prior to reading the book, I feel the need to up the ante. (However, I hope that anyone making close to what I make will find the 1% commitment perfectly doable, and it’s a great first step.) My goal for 2022 is to make the 10% giving pledge advocated by Giving What We Can (and also cited by many religions as the proper amount to tithe). If my income rises in the future, I hope to increase my percentage of giving, using the suggested scale in Singer’s book as reference.
Even a 10% donation of my pre-tax income is not imposing, especially when one considers the comparative power of such an income. Using the income calculator available on Giving What We Can’s website, I find that my 50K yearly income places me in the top 1.5% of incomes globally—that means I am wealthier than 98.5% of the world’s 7+ billion people. The calculator also reveals that my income is roughly 17.7 times the global median. I encourage everyone to play with this calculator and get a sense of how extraordinarily wealthy the average middle-class American is compared to many people around the world; this kind of perspective really exposes our insidious ideas about wealth and how much we need to be “safe” or “happy.” It’s worth remembering that approximately 10% of the world population lives in extreme poverty, defined by the U.N. as subsisting on about $2 per day—and to be clear, that amount is already adjusted, meaning that whatever the foreign currency, it is the equivalent of living on $2 per day here in the United States. I doubt that any American could tolerate such a condition.
Finally, I want to make one thing abundantly clear: my intention with this post is not to trumpet my own philanthropy or moral excellence. The purpose of “going public” here is two-fold. First, I want to make my commitments known in the hope that you—friends, family, and fellow citizens—will help hold me accountable to my pledges. When you see me, please ask me more about my giving, and feel free to gently but firmly chide me if I seem to be failing or somehow waffling—I genuinely desire additional accountability. Second, I truly hope that many of you will take the time to learn more about effective altruism and make commitments yourself to give more freely and generously. The more of us who embrace this philosophy, the more quickly and effectively we can elevate the lives of millions of suffering people, and make this world a fairer and happier place.
Please feel free to call or message me. I would love to sit down with you and explore these ideas in greater detail. And thank you for taking the time to read or listen to this post.
