December 24, 2003

Christmas Giving

Posted by Harry

If you don’t like being guilt-tripped skip this. The rest of you get your credit cards out. Here’s the deal. Figure out how much you are spending on Christmas/Holiday cheer. Figure out how much has been spent on you. Add the two figures together. Halve that figure and plug it in to the OxfamAmerica form or the Oxfam UK form (depending where you pay taxes — for other countries you can reach your own country by negotiating from the OxfamAmerica home page). (Note: if, like me, no-one spends anything on you at Christmas the decent thing to do is to skip the adding and halving stages.) If you are a utilitarian this is the best thing you can do, if you are a Kantian it is also the best thing as long as you don’t enjoy it (that’s a joke — I know Kantianism isn’t really like that).

Next year I’ll do this early in December so you can avoid giving presents to people you don’t like and, instead, send them an email saying you’ve donated X amount to Oxfam in their name.

Donations from non-celebrators of Christmas are also, I believe, welcome.

Posted on December 24, 2003 02:55 PM UTC
Comments

But Harry, what about the economy? Did you think of that? How selfish of you. :)

Posted by SJS · December 24, 2003 04:53 PM

Well, Oxfam eventually has to spend your donation, right? You may hurt the Tickle Me Elmo industry, but you’ll make up for it by indirectly supporting the staple food industry.

Posted by Stentor · December 25, 2003 12:17 AM

So anyone recieving an Oxfam email from Harry knows he doesn’t like them.

Posted by Tom K · December 26, 2003 08:43 AM

It looks like Oxfam spends money fighting trade agreements that are likely to help the poor (no, they aren’t perfectly fair, but they’re better than the alternative).

That doesn’t seem like a good way to help to me.

Posted by Gil · December 28, 2003 01:58 AM

In that case Gil of course you are welcome to give your money elsewhere. I’m not meaning to suggest (nor is anyone else) that Oxfam’s activities are optimal for the poor relative to some ideal. But, relative to any other outfit actually available to give money to I’d like to see an argument that they’re not the best. I suppose an outfit that devoted all its efforts to fighting agricultural subsidies in the rich world might do more good in the long run; but it would do no good at all in the short run — I prefer Oxfam’s diversified portfolio of short-medium term concrete benefits (and a commitment to having independent evaluations of these projects) and lobbying for longer term benefits.

Posted by harry · December 28, 2003 03:40 PM
Followups

→ The Christmas Post on Boxing Day.
Excerpt: First I want to engage in something that's a bit of a blog tradition already: begging for money. Not for me mind you. This site costs nothing to run. And I get paid quite well thank you, and presumably will be paid well more next year, so I don't need ...Read more at Thoughts Arguments and Rants

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.