US religion is worth $1.2T/year, more than America's 10 biggest tech companies, combined

[WhyBother]

@jhbadger

In fact, the $1.2T is mostly made up of money that people willingly part with to third parties because of their religions, including the charitable giving of religious people which helps to cover the general public’s unwillingness to spend tax money helping the disavdantaged

The problem is that people don’t want to pay more taxes if they are already giving money to their religious institutions. And the health care, education, and other services provided by religious institutions is inferior to government run ones because there are religious dogmas attached (no family planning in some hospitals, no covering of evolution in some schools, etc). Religious institutions should only deal with their stories of the afterlife and not worldly things.

If we didn’t deal with worldly things, you’d have fewer hospitals and soup kitchens.

First, people don’t want to pay more taxes because they don’t want to pay taxes. That has nothing to do with religion. Dumping your money into a huge aggregate of projects and hoping that the issue you care about is dealt with somehow is probably the least sensible approach you can take to fixing a problem. We do it when we have to: first, because there are some important issues that no one actually wants to cover, and second because the tax man doesn’t give us a choice. But you’ll notice that, as a people, we shy away from that path every single chance we get. Whether you’re religious or not, you probably still think you know better how to spend your money to fit your goals than Uncle Sam does.

Second, Americans give more as a percentage of GDP than any other country on Earth. On the World Giving Index, only Myanmar scores higher. Americans give. They just don’t want to give to the government, or expect the government to actually help with any of the social issues they care about. They mostly try to fix their own problems, rather than demand that the government figure it out. So with that in mind, maybe you should start by asking why their aren’t more secular and privately-held hospitals, food pantries, and schools.