People give as much as they care to. To the extent that they give less than they'd claim they'd want to see given, it's because the former is a revealed preference and the latter is an expressive preference. There's only failure involved inasmuch as we let things be determined by expressive preferences (at the ballot box) rather than revealed preferences.
Your imagination is clearly too limited if you can't imagine anyone who would baldly state that they prefer the cable TV. I certainly prefer spending my $67/mth on Dish Network top 100 plus HBOs plus locals plus built-in TIVO to sending the money off to save an arbitrarily large number of children in a foreign country. If I didn't have that rank ordering of preferences, I'd get rid of the Dish. Eric On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Jason DeBacker wrote: > Why don’t more people give more money to charity? > > If you asked someone if they would rather see $50 used to > feed a child for a month or on another month cable TV (or > whatever), I can’t imagine someone not saying that the child > should be fed. But almost no one gives $50 a month to > charity and many give that to watch cable television (or > spend it on other “frivolous” purchases). > > Why does this happen? > > A few possible reasons: > - The history of charitable money getting into the wrong > hands has scared people from donating. > - There is some kind of market failure (a la the story of the > woman being attacked while the whole block watched and no one > stopping it or calling the police). > - People really don’t care about helping someone else, but > are ashamed to admit that. > - People just don’t think about donating. > > Regards, > Jason DeBacker >
