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begreen622 OP t1_j8531a9 wrote

Reply to comment by ediblebadger in IamA entrepreneur who sold his house on the ocean to bake chocolate chip cookies. Today, 11yrs & $2.5million later we're at the end of the road. by begreen622

the real blocker is that my family, employees, creditors and bank balance are all in the mix. I donate responsibly.

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ediblebadger t1_j85jnnr wrote

Your employees have nothing to do with it. I'm not suggesting you donate all of your money to a food bank and live in a hovel. I'm saying it's a basically decent thing to do to voluntary tithe a small but nonzero portion of your ongoing income. I think virtually anybody with any steady income is financially capable to pledge to donate 5-10%. Maybe I should take this to mean that you don't have income and/or are in debt. If so, I am sorry to hear that. However, if you have no income (or that income is otherwise not disposable), you don't have to donate anything and can still take the pledge!

Edit: I received some feedback that this is too harsh. I’m sorry, Mr. Greenhut, it’s not appropriate of me to go to so far into questioning your financial situation. I struck through some portions that are not fair/unambiguously true.

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grnrngr t1_j877qc7 wrote

What an incredible pressure campaign to harangue someone to donate money.

Further, you must live in an isolated circle, removed from reality, to repeatedly assert "most people" can give 5-10% of their income without concern. "Most people" can't save 5-10% of their income for a rainy-day fund, let alone give away.

You're doing the good work pressuring this guy about his BS, but don't introduce your own into the convo.

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ediblebadger t1_j87nbe0 wrote

You know what, you have a good point. It’s not really productive for me to focus so much on the particular percentage. The important part of ‘Giving what we can” here is “what we can,” and I think basically any nonzero percentage is great, and it’s a very personal decision and you’re right that needling people over numbers is bad.

But I don’t think you are right to say that most people are so financially insecure that they cannot give any money away at all. Actually, most Americans (typically something like 60%) do give to charity, and the bottom fifth in wealth donate the highest proportion of their wealth (about 4.5% iirc). In high-income countries a median income makes you somewhere among the richest 5% of people on Planet Earth. By their own admission, 90% of working Americans would sacrifice some income for more meaningful work. I really do actually think that most Americans can donate something, but if your point is that you think 5% of income is too high then then I’m willing to agree that maybe that isn’t right for everybody. Not to get to hung up on numbers, but I will concede that 5% is not “barely noticeable” for most people. But 1% probably is, and there are several “pledges” that use this instead.

I think it is more important to impress upon the affluent that they are not holding up their share and could be giving substantially more than they do than to give some blanket amount that even low-income folks should feel bad about not giving. Poor people are already doing more than rich people proportionally!

That was my purpose here, was to kind of break down the assumption of somebody who by their own commentary lives comfortably and simply doesn’t seem interested in charitable giving, using their employees as a dubious shield. If that came across as overzealous then I apologize to all. I went ahead and struck through some portions that upon further reflection I don’t feel good about standing behind.

At the same time, I would appreciate it if you (as in anybody reading) please do seriously consider signing the GWWC pledge.

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