Trickle or Treat?
Some years Halloween comes early to the South End … and some years it never seems to leave. Down here in the nettle regions the kids get driven north to the Stanwoodopolis Suburbs where the candy flows like bottled mineral water and the sodium lights force phantom predators into the shadows. This season we just got the fright-filled statistics from studies that show philanthropy by the wealthy dropped by nearly 5%, wealthy being those who made over $200 K a year.
I guess the candy jars are going to empty a tad earlier when our little ‘Takers’ roll up to the festooned front doors of the Tricklers. Forget that trickle down theory of supply-siders, I think the drought of charity may be a prolonged one. And no, it probably isn’t the result of Global Warming…. Next year we’ll probably see moats around the castles and the gated communities will add spikes to the fences. Treats for the beggaring poor? Fuggedaboudit! When times get tough, some hearts get harder.
In the same study they found that the poorer folks had actually increased their charitable giving by as much as the wealthy had decreased theirs. I suspect when you belong to a community, you think of neighbors as real people struggling with the same problems as the rest of us. We don’t think of folks who can’t afford health care, folks who lost a job, folks who had their house repossessed as vampires feeding on the Body Politic. They’re us. They’re not who we ‘Unfriend’ when they need help the most. They’re who we look at in our own mirror.
It would be way too easy to demonize the rich. Sure, we could send the kids out this Halloween in tuxedoes and Armani suits. Wearing fangs. But charity, like our mothers said, begins at home, so maybe we should trickle down some to them. And no, I don’t mean give them another tax break. They already got Christmas 365 days a year.
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