UPPER MIDDLE: #StingyTuesday → Chari-Punks → ARMed, Unready

Hey Neighbor. New research suggests people are likelier to donate to charity when they find out friends are donating and less likely to donate when they find out a family member has done so. Conscious or nah, Americans understand charity as a collective responsibility shared with those to whom they have financial ties.

Spitting some wisdom on a #GivingTuesday.

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→ As the weather turns colder, game nights become more common and more and more intelligent, well-read adults have crises of confidence when they fail to understand what are supposed to be basic rules. The problem, according to Louisiana Tech grad student Dean Ray Johnson, is with the rulebooks. In a glorious takedown of an overlooked literary genre, Johson argues persuasively that rule books are written in technical language inscrutable to casual players, packed with visual learning cues that don’t work in practice, and packed with conditional clauses that make mental loads untenable. In short: We are not the problem. (READ MORE)

→ The WSJ has hired a reporter to cover the “culture of Wall Street.” Kevin Dugan, formerly of New York Magazine, will be responsible for covering the lifestyles of the semi-rich and unimaginatively dressed for the ever expanding audience of online readers interested in the stylish nihilism of those suffering from Bloomberg Terminal illness.

→ It’s “Reflexive Centrism Season” in America as every self-professed heterodox thinker – all those Atlas Shrugged loving druncles – searches for insight in moderation. It’s a good moment to have this Ayn Rand quote in you back pocket: "In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win.”

Giving to charity is nice. It pays to do nice strategically.

It’s #GivingTuesday, which means you’ve been subjected to a lates aughts pick-up scene worth of come-ons – end of year appeals, matching drives, tote bags – each designed to tug the heartstrings of listeners, viewers, and privilege-acknowledgers like you. And you want to give, sure, but you’re skeptical of the Charity Industrial Complex; the venn diagram of friends working in non-profits and friends who never win at Catan is a circle. You’re happy to give away some wheat, but you want to think about it strategically.

It’s not so hard. There are essentially two ways of thinking about donations. How many and how much. Counterintuitively it’s best to start by thinking about how many.

A decade ago, non-profit leaders spoke about “80/20 Giving,” the tendency of orgs to receive 80% of donations from 20% of donors. But due to growing wealth inequality, changes in itemization and deduction rules during Trump I, and a crisis of trust in charitable institutions, the Fundraising Effectiveness Project now puts the ratio closer to 76/3 or 88/12. “Normal” donations declined by 25% between 2005 and 2015 and have likely plunged further since.

Given that the number of grant-making institutions has grown as low-ticket donations decreased, it’s fair for Upper Middle givers to ask if they are simply helping big-money charities obscure to the degree to which they sit, like so many Bentley keychains, in the pockets of billionaires. And, yes, that’s pretty much what’s happening. But that’s okay. Small-money donations to big-money charities help market causes to major donors, who want to target popular charities and tend to have boards that care about visibility.

Giving Tuesday is fundamentally about visibility and is – no real surprise here – supported by tk. These are orgs that don’t just want to give. They want to be seen giving. Like the WASPs who put plaques on public tennis courts and the Jews who put their names on the walls of oncology wards, major donors want some appreciation. Thus the matching drives.

As such, it makes sense to give widely, but not particularly generously to big money charities (think: Feeding america, American Cancer Society, Save the Children). And to give more generously to niche or local non-profits where your check might actually affect an operating budget. And arguably, it makes sense to give not only to smaller charities, but also to more politically extreme charities (whether that’s an anarchist collective or an Elk’s Lodge). The Charity Industrial Complex is, after all, a form of self-dealing. It patches holes in the roof of society, staving off a restructuring that might not benefit the elite.

As Anand Giridharadas puts it: “In an age defined by a chasm between those who have power and those who don’t, elites have spread the idea that people must be helped, but only in market-friendly ways that do not upset fundamental power equations.”

In 2024, it may be best to think about charity as two different activities. The first is an act of benevolent complicity designed to steer money toward the most critical causes. The second is an act of rebellion against the status quo the first reinforces

→ Fun seasonal tip. When someone turns on Love, Actually, use the Memento Movi calculator to find the moment in the film that represents how close they are to death (the ultimate closing credits) then pause the movie and tell them. Happy Holidays! (TRY IT)

→ Valletta, Malta – last seen getting sacked by Pedro Pascal in Gladiator II – has become a point of interest for wealthy Americans looking to get a second passport post-election. Searches for “second passports” are up 1000%+ since November 4 and Malta offers the fastest path to E.U. citizenship for those able/willing to invest $750,000. The fun wrinkle here is that Valletta is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe – wrongly overlooked by travelers for decades. Whether or not they buy a pied-a-terre, it’s probably for the best that more NPR listeners make a visit.

→ The Oxford English dictionary has named “brain-rot” the word of the year for 2024. Of note, the word comes from an American source bemoaning (among other things) the media sensationalism of his era. That would be everybody’s favorite smelly neighbor, Henry David Thoreau, who asked the following rhetorical question in 1854: “While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”

 → In advance of Christmas party season, New York collated entertaining wisdom from notable women. A few gems:

• “I believe the potluck tradition of entertaining is the equivalent of a teenage boy wanting to have sex with his girlfriend but who is too scared to go to CVS to buy condoms.” - Mindy Kaling

• “What makes a brilliant party? Clothes. Good clothes. A frumpy party is nothing more nor less than a collection of badly dressed persons.” - Emily Post

• “Some people paint, others make music and dance, I make table settings. That’s my way of expressing my artistic and creative side.” - Kris Jenner

As more and more charities have chased big-money donors toward the political (and aesthetic) center, a handful of high-integrity, highly belligerent organizations have worked to appeal to issue-oriented hardliners. These organizations have very intentionally positioned themselves in opposition to bourgeois go-with-the-flow, putting out a more punk vibe and the only charity merch worth wearing.

Give Directly gives money directly to people who need money. As such, they are not so subtle about communicating their contempt for the Charity Industrial Complex.

The Baffler, the non-profit, MIT-based publication that brought the Adbusters mentality of the late 1990s into the modern era, is – as always – extremely in on the joke.

Punks With Lunch is a local Oakland org that helps people in need find basic services. Their haircuts are awful, but their shirts are superlative.

 Planned Parenthood will see donations spike this season and for good reason. The going is going to get tough. They know it and they’ve refined their message down to jewelry.

Someone at Greenpeace watched Succession and thought Cousin Greg’s plan to recover his inheritance was hilarious. Yup. Great stuff.

Sea Shepherd is basically a bunch of animal-loving pirates that attack whaling vessels. They dress accordingly. What happens in international waters, stays in international waters.

→ Venture capitalists are starting to put their money behind real estate tech designed to facilitate housing auctions inspired by Australian sales, which generally involve real-time bidding rather than days- or weeks-long games of telephone. For buyers, it brings about transparency and eliminates reliance on agents. For agents, it looks like another step down the yellow-brick road toward obsolescence. (READ MORE)

→ A new Bank of Israel study demonstrates a correlation between mortgage payments and consumption. A single percent point change in an adjustable rate mortgage mapped to a reduction in consumers spending of .036-.045%. It’s not massive, but with some rates moving dramatically over the last few years, it’s not nothing either. Mortgage payments against consumption. (READ MORE)

→ t might still have been the economy, stupid. An analysis shows that real wage growth (factoring in inflation) was lower under Biden than Trump and, more specifically, lower for the 75th percentile of earners (your neighbors in the slightly smaller house down the block) than at any point in at least the last 43 years. (READ MORE)

NOTES & FOOTNOTES

[1] It’s odd more vibrators aren’t engineered for post-partum and menopausal women. It makes sense to experiment more during periods of physical and emotional change. That’s why MysteryVibe makes products for couples willing to try something new.

[2] What could better represent elite midwittery than a Federalist Papers reference applied to a meme. Still, it’s salient. In Federalist #10, Madison was clear that the point of democratic governance was to mitigated the threat of factions. What Madison did not imagine was that a group of factions could be aligned to form a political majority. Like it or not, it’s a hell of an accomplishment. It’s also a prime example of near enemy/far enemy thinking.

[3] An important wrinkle here is that genius tends to be specific. A disproportionate number of the members of the Institute for Creation Research hold advanced degrees in engineering. These are very smart people who love complex systems and have more self-confidence than biology education.

[4] If you really want to go all out with the Tesla Autopilot concept, kill 51 Americans. That’s the current 2024 total.