Charitable Donations

I enjoyed Martin E. Marty’s “The Forgotten Question” (Opinion, Oct. 19). Like Professor Marty, I am in the middle of an annual fund-raiser, and I have observed the same lack of interest he noted in baby boomers and their juniors. Marty notes that “wearying, but still well-off seniors” still give. The seniors of whom he speaks I suppose to be my parents’ generation. While they endured the Great Depression and a horrible world war, the America they inherited was growing in positive ways. From 1946 on it was a pretty smooth ride until they shipped my generation off to Vietnam.

After that, baby boomers have been on a roller coaster ride. While the Dow Jones is in the clouds today, the domestic economy has lost its industrial base, we have seen gross inflation, stagflation, astronomical increases in energy costs, a virtual flood of illegal cheap labor, generations of welfare families, repeated layoffs and rehirings and the downsizing of the American corporation. In addition, we have been told not to rely on Social Security being around when we retire. Our employers and institutions have been far less than kind in delivering all the above. In the parlance of the cowboy, “We’ve been rode hard and put up wet.”

So, indeed, getting boomers and others to give to charity is a tough sell. I have to keep on chanting my personal mantra for this year’s charity campaign, “A hungry child doesn’t know you’re having a bad day.”

LARRY CAIRD

Palmdale

* The reason America is losing its famous third sector (voluntarism, religious and charity work), which Marty notes was the envy of the world when Tocqueville paid his 19th century visit, is not just due to rampant materialism. At the beginning of this century, government took 2% of GNP; now it takes 33% of GNP.

Government today competes with and displaces the third sector everywhere from education to health care to welfare, while creating dependency and entitlement, not the church affiliation, spiritual conversion, employment and integrity voluntarism creates. I admire what Marty is doing. I just wish he could get our money back from government so we could give more to churches and other charities.

RICHARD L. TRADEWELL

Costa Mesa