“Thinking of you this Holiday Season, I’m sending someone else this lovely and generous gift!”
D.A. Ridgely on Dec 19th 2007
I’m not an economist nor do I play one on the internet, so I have little to add to Mr. Kuznicki’s comments regarding Christmas and deadweight losses except to note that it gets harder and harder every Christmas to lose the deadweight I put on at the dinner table.
On the topic of gifts, seasonal or otherwise, it remains among the eternal verities that (1) we spend money most prudently when we spend our own money on ourselves, (2) less prudently when we spend other people’s money on ourselves, (3) still less prudently when we spend our own money on others and (4) least prudently when we spend other people’s money on other people. Burdensome child labor laws being what they are, my younger children never seem to have sufficient wherewithal to purchase presents for the family. As solutions go, a cash infusion from one or more parents teaches them only about the last sort of spending. This results not only in suboptimal gifts under the Christmas tree but, worse yet, only prepares them for future careers as politicians and bureaucrats.
In recent years I have discovered that there is a fifth sort of spending; namely, spending one’s own money on oneself but pretending it is for someone else. In its purest form, this thinly disguised self-indulgence takes the form of, oh, say, a brand new flat screen HD television “for the whole family.” Fathers, it seems, are especially inclined to buy their children the sort of toys that they, too, can enjoy.
Finally, there is an odd variation on this fifth form of spending and so far it seems to be practiced almost exclusively by liberals and progressives of one sort or another. This is the charitable donation “in your name.” Now, before I go on to offend my various liberal friends – yes, I do have liberal friends and, yes, I’m going to offend them in a moment – let it be noted that several such friends whose friendships I cherish have been engaging in this form of “gift giving” for some years now. In fact, the charities they select are unobjectionable at least in the sense that their donations are going toward some goal of which I generally approve, e.g., feeding poor children or cancer research. Even so, it strikes me as frankly absurd to describe Ms X giving money to Cause Y as any sort of gift to Mr. Z. Mr. Z doesn’t even get the tax deduction and it is dubious, to put it mildly, that Mr. Z will enjoy the psychic benefits that accrue from acts of charity nearly as much as Ms X will.
Such charitable contributions are, I understand, frequently given “in lieu of flowers” to honor the memory of the deceased – the florists industry must still be cursing whoever thought of that phrase! – but, let’s face it, the deceased doesn’t benefit from either flowers or charitable gifts and no one is pretending otherwise. Indeed, we don’t think of these as gifts to the deceased at all. I think those who do this genuinely believe that they are honoring the living non-recipients who are informed of such gifts to charity “in their name,” but I can’t for the life of me figure out how. Any thoughts?
Filed in The Basement
Come now, this is an easy dichotomy, which I believe you have slightly misunderstood.
So-called “gifts” in someone’s (living) name to the donor’s favorite charity are not really gifts. They are a pretense of giving that satisfies the ego or conscience of the donor by trying to get a “two for one.” If a donor wants to support a charity or organization, then donate to it. Do not try to gain some extra benefit by telling a living friend you did it for them.
Gifts in memory of the dead and in lieu of flowers are a form of respect or condolence, as long as the person or survivors have designated some charity. Otherwise, it is back in the class of the previous paragraph.
This liberal does not indulge in the first kind of giving.
sirhcton
sirhcton (and D. A.),
So-called “gifts” in someone’s (living) name to the donor’s favorite charity are not really gifts.
Tell that to the charity! In my own case, they were quite appreciative, and they took no offense whatsoever when I asked that the gift be made “in honor of” my parents. They were delighted.
Do not try to gain some extra benefit by telling a living friend you did it for them.
Why on earth not? Assuming it’s a charity the honoree cares about, then it is definitionally certain that they will be happy about the donation to some degree. (True, it’s also definitionally certain that they will not be happy to the full extent of a cash transfer, since they would not do the same if all the cash were given to them instead. But this is the paradox of gift-giving that we’re already discussing, just in slightly different attire.)
It may help to know the specifics of my own Christmas gift: My parents sent me to a private high school, a difficult decision for the whole family at the time. This Christmas I made a donation to the school, both to recognize the school itself and to show my respect for my mother and father, who had the foresight to send me there. They did well.
Side notes:
–My parents don’t read this blog. But I did tell them about the gift a little early, just in case.
– My parents at first insisted that I give them no gifts at all for Christmas, because “they didn’t need anything.” I wasn’t going to take no for an answer, because the tradition of gift giving is important to me.
– The high school is a Catholic institution. In the Christian tradition, there are two important principles at play beyond liberal/progressive do-goodery:
First — Christmas should be a time for charitable giving.
Second — Honor thy mother and father.
I may not be much of a Christian, but these are laudable impulses.
Actually, I think that mother and father honoring tradition is even pre-Christian. Be that as it may, I have no doubt about the honorable intentions of many of those who do this sort of thing or that such third-party gifts do also sometimes please the honoree, but I think your specific example only goes part way toward explaining the general case phenomenon.
First, family dynamics are per se different from the more general case of mere friends I was addressing. And, sure, the charity considers the donation a gift, but that was never in dispute. At least not in my original comments.
I don’t entirely share sirhcton’s cynicism here (which is odd, because I’m usually a firm believer in the principle that however cynical one gets, it’s never enough) but I do have to say I think that even your example comes perilously close to ‘giving’ the folks that HD TV you’d enjoy on visits. Anyway, I’m not claiming it is an entirely hypocritical practice, only that it is less altruistic than it might at first blush seem.
[BTW, I noticed on third reading (oh, for a competent editor!) that the opening sentence of this thread, specifically the "play one on the internet" comment, could be incorrectly read as some sort of swipe at Mr. Kusnicki. Any such inference is absolutely wrong -- my strained attempt at humor there was, like most of my waking thoughts, entirely self-referential.]
I stand by my original analysis, as it relates to the originaly postulated cases. The first is someone donating to their own favorite charity in lieu of a gift to another; the second is donating in the name of a dead person in lieu of flowers, presumably to a charity designated by that person or his survivors.
Getting into the full spectrum of possible cases leads to establishing how altruistic or hypocritical each might be. I thought the point was more general.
As for being cynical, perhaps. In my dotage, I might also be more realistic in my evaluations of my fellow human beings.
I’ve made a contribution to the Human Fund on behalf of this lovely blog.
OK, OK, everybody was thinking it, but somebody had to say it. Happy Festivus!
“Money for People”