Yeah, crazy how that ends up making the US "....World Giving Index: US Ranked Most Charitable Country On Earth"

...In its second annual study of 153 countries, the Charity Aid Foundation concluded that the U.S. has demonstrated "strong" behavior across all three criteria measured -- volunteering, helping strangers and donating money. The U.S. has increased its charity by 3 percentage points this year, up to $212 billion.

"The point to leave with American leaders is the world really needs America; it needs its generosity, its resource and spirit, and though times are really hard, this is the time we need to keep giving as much as we possibly can," Richard Harrison, director of research at the UK-based Charities Aid Foundation told The NonProfit Times.

Ireland and Australia trailed behind the U.S. in giving, but the study noted that the most affluent countries aren't necessarily the most philanthropic. Only five of the countries featured in the World Bank's top 20 GDP made to the Charity Aid Foundation's top 20 list.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/19/world-giving-index-us-ran_n_1159562.html

Not sure how you get "quite low" or "quite selfish" out of that?

You mean those people who - because they are largely churchgoers - represent the largest outpouring of donated money and goods in the country?

Yeah, horrible bunch, them.

...perhaps I could correct this a little:
"'U.S. citizens have passively accepted weak privacy rules that let companies collect massive amounts of personal data. The strategy enabled the companies to work their way into every corner of consumers' lives ..."

I keep hearing about the "US govt" this and "companies" that.
The fact is that the whole 'privacy' thing is comparable to the cigarette issue for the last 50 years....NOBODY believed cigarettes were in any way good for you, and by the late 1960s pretty much everyone recognized that they were quite harmful (regardless of what the cigarette companies insisted).

In short, the consumers willfully participated and knew (when they bothered to think about it) that companies were collecting massive amounts of data with every transaction, using (without complaint) their social security number as an id#, etc.

When I've got a friend or three complaining about companies/government gathering private data, they're usually paying for their meal with a credit card.

Except that's wrong.
Yes, our official aid is small, but I know for the calculations for the Indonesian tsunami that I watched in detail, +none+ of the reported aid-tallies included the scores of millions of $ spent by the US on providing an entire carrier group for months, plus dozens of other in-kind services; most of them likewise disregarded or underreported private and church-based aid which is often multiples of the "official" dollar amounts, and completely dwarfs such aid from all other countries combined.
So no, actually, studies have routinely showed that the amount of aid coming from the US +and its citizens+ regularly exceeds that of anyone else...as it should, as we are wealthy and fortunate.

It's amazing how people that want higher taxes pretty much universally want them for other people first, isn't it?

I think it's delightful that someone is bright enough to identify this as propaganda. Please help me fight such pernicious lies that Heritage purports to justify these "facts".

It seems to be amply footnoted, with 50+ references:
[1]Carmen DeNavas-Walt, Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, âoeIncome, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010,â U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports: Consumer Income, P60-239, September 2011, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-239.pdf (September 13, 2011). The Census Bureau defines an individual as poor if his or her family cash income falls below certain specified income thresholds. These thresholds vary by family size. In 2010, a family of four was deemed poor if its annual income fell below $22,314. A family of three was deemed poor if its annual income was below $17,374.
[2] See Catholic Campaign for Human Development, âoePoverty Pulse, Wave IV,â January 2004, at http://old.usccb.org/cchd/PP4FINAL.PDF (September 7, 2011). Interestingly, only about 1 percent of those surveyed regarded poverty in the terms the government does: as having an income below a specified level.
[3]These surveys include the Residential Energy Consumption Survey, What We Eat in America, Food Security, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the American Housing Survey, and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. See U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Residential Energy Consumption Survey, at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/ (June 22, 2011); U.S. Department of Agriculture, What We Eat in America, NHANES 2007â"2008, Table 4, at http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12355000/pdf/0708/Table_4_NIN_POV_07.pdf (June 22, 2011); Mark Nord, âoeFood Insecurity in Households with Children: Prevalence, Severity, and Household Characteristics,â U.S. Department of Agriculture, September 2009, at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB56/EIB56.pdf (September 7, 2011); U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, âoeAbout the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey,â at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/about_nhanes.htm (September 7, 2011); U.S. Census Bureau, âoeAmerican Housing Survey (AHS),â at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/ahs/ahs.html (June 27, 2011); and U.S. Census Bureau, Survey of Income and Program Participation, 2001 Panel, Wave 8 Topical Module, 2003, at http://www.bls.census.gov/sipp_ftp.html#sipp01 (June 27, 2011).
[4]U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau, American Housing Survey for the United States: 2009, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/h150-09.pdf (September 8, 2011).
[5] U.S Department of Energy, Residential Energy Consumption Survey.
[6]Derek Thompson, âoe30 Million in Poverty Arenâ(TM)t as Poor as You Think, Says Heritage Foundation,â The Atlantic Monthly, July 19, 2011, at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/07/30-million-in-poverty-arnt-as-poor-as-you-think-says-heritage-foundation/242191/ (September 7, 2011).
[7] C. T. Windham, B. W. Wyse, and R. G. Hansen, âoeNutrient Density of Diets in the USDA Nationwide Food Consumption Survey, 1977â"1978: I. Impact of Socioeconomic Status on Dietary Density,â Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Vol. 82, No. 1 (January 1983), pp. 28â"43.
[8] Interagency Board for Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research, Third Report on Nutrition Monitoring in the United States, Vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), p. VA-167, at http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12355000/pdf/nutri95_2acc.pdf (September 7, 2011).
[9] Katherine S. Tippett et al., Food and Nutrient Intakes by Individuals in the United States, 1 Day, 1989â"91, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, September 1995, at http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12355000/pdf/csfii8991_rep_91-2.pdf (September 7, 2011).
[10] Ibid., pp. 182â"183, Table 10.1, and pp. 188â"189, Table 10.4. Table 1 in the present paper also provides the âoemean adequacy ratioâ for various groups. The mean adequacy ratio represents average intake of all the nutriments listed as a percent of RDA. However, in computing mean adequacy, intake values exceeding 100 percent of RDA are counted at 100 because the body cannot use an excess consumption of one nutriment to fill a shortfall of another nutriment.
[11]U.S. Department of Agriculture, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, âoeDiet Quality of Low-Income and Higher Income Americans in 2003â"04 as Measured by the Healthy Eating Indexâ"2005,â Nutrition Insight, No. 42, December 2008, at http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/NutritionInsights/Insight42.pdf (September 12, 2011). This study compares children in households with incomes below 185 percent of poverty with children in households with incomes above 185 percent of poverty.
[12] The World Health Organization uses standard height-for-age tables developed by the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[13] Mercedes de Onis and Jean-Pierre Habicht, âoeAnthropometric Reference Data for International Use: Recommendations from a World Health Organization Expert Committee,â American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 64, No. 4 (October 1996), pp. 650â"658.
[14] Heritage Foundation calculation using National Health and Nutrition Evaluation Survey III data and WHO standard tables for shortness for age. Shortness for age is the result of genetic variation as well as nutritional factors. The World Health Organization standards assume that even in a very well-nourished population, 2.3 percent of children will have heights below the âoestuntedâ cutoff levels due to normal genetic factors. Problems are apparent if the number of short children in a population rises appreciably above 2.3 percent.
[15] Bernard D. Karpinos, âoeCurrent Height and Weight of Youths of Military Age,â Human Biology, Vol. 33 (1961), pp. 336â"364. Recent data on young males in poverty provided by the National Center for Health Statistics of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, based on the second National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
[16]Food Research Action Council, âoeHunger in America, and Its Solutions: Basic Facts,â July 2004, at http://www.colvillefoodbank.com/Pdf%20Files/HungerFacts.pdf (September 7, 2011).
[17]The figures in Chart 3 were calculated from U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, December 2009: Food Security Supplement. The December supplement data provide the basis for the household food security reports of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20]Mark Nord, Alisha Coleman-Jensen, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carlson, âoeHousehold Food Security in the United States, 2009,â U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Report No. 108, November 2010, at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR108/ERR108.pdf (September 7, 2011). The USDA also reports that 32.5 million households had âoelow food securityâ in 2009. At times during the year, households with low food security âoeworried whether our food would run outâ and âoecouldnâ(TM)t afford balanced meals.â They at times reduced food quality and variety and used âoea few kinds of low cost foodâ to stretch their food dollars, but these households for the most part âoeavoided substantial reductions or disruptions in food intakeâ throughout the year. Ibid., p. 4. Individuals in the âoelow food securityâ category rarely stated that they were hungry. Aware that the USDA has never asserted that households with âoelow food securityâ experience hunger, news media often refer to this group as âoeat risk of hunger,â âoestruggling with hunger,â âoenearing hunger,â or âoefacing hunger.â Undoubtedly, these verbal sleights of hand mislead most listeners into believing that the millions of Americans are hungry when the USDA data show that this is not the case.
[21] Ibid., p. 5.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid., p. 9.
[24] Ibid., p. 10.
[25] Ibid., p. 12. The number of poor households with children in which the adults experienced very low food security while the children did not would be much larger.
[26]Calculation based on U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, December 2008: Food Security Supplement File, December 2009, at http://www.census.gov/apsd/techdoc/cps/cpsdec08.pdf (September 9, 2011).
[27] Ibid.
[28]For example, a 60 Minutes story equated child poverty with homelessness. CBS News, âoeHard Times Generation,â 60 Minutes, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR3jQOgs9gc (June 22, 2011).
[29]U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Community Planning and Development, The 2009 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, June 2010, p. 8, at http://www.hudhre.info/documents/5thHomelessAssessmentReport.pdf (June 22, 2011).
[30]An estimated 643,000 individuals were homeless on any given night in 2009. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, The 2009 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, p. 7. The Current Population Survey states that the U.S. population in 2009 was 303.6 million. Thus, the single-night homeless were 0.2 percent of the population or one in 500 persons. The Current Population Survey states that 43.6 million persons were poor in 2009, which means that the single-night homeless were 1.48 percent of the poor population or one in every 68 poor persons. This calculation assumes that all of the homeless would have an annual income below the poverty level. Technically, persons who are homeless at the point of survey would not be included in the Census count of persons or poor persons. To be precise, the homeless should be added to the denominator in both calculations, but this would affect the results only marginally.
[31]U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, The 2009 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, p. 7.
[32] Ibid., p. 18.
[33]The number of evictions has increased substantially during the current recession. Nonetheless, in the 2009 American Housing Survey, only 191,000 households (0.2 percent of all households) reported being evicted during the previous year. This figure does not include persons who at the time of the survey were in homeless shelters or were doubled up with relatives. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau, American Housing Survey for the United States.
[34]U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, The 2009 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, p. 26, Exhibit 3-2.
[35] U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau, American Housing Survey for the United States, 2009, pp. 11â"12, Table 2-1.
[36] Ibid., pp. 15â"16, Table 2-3.
[37] Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (New York: Dover Press, 1971), pp. 6, 41, and 59.
[38]Kees Dol and Marietta Haffner, Housing Statistics of the European Union 2010, Netherlands Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, September 2010, p. 51, Table 2.1, at http://abonneren.rijksoverheid.nl/media/dirs/436/data/housing_statistics_in_the_european_union_2010.pdf (September 7, 2011), and U.S. Department of Energy, 2005 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, Consumption & Expenditures Tables, Summary Statistics, Table US1, Part 2, at http://www.eia.gov/emeu/recs/recs2005/hc2005_tables/c&e/pdf/tableus1part2.pdf (September 7, 2011).
[39]U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau, American Housing Survey for the United States, 2009, p. 63.
[40]Calculated from ibid.
[41] Ibid., pp. 17â"18, Table 2-4, and pp. 22â"23, Table 2-7.
[42]Use of unvented oil, kerosene, or gas heaters as the primary heat source occurs almost exclusively in the South. Ibid., pp. 22â"23, Table 2-7.
[43]Calculated from U.S. Census Bureau, Survey of Income and Program Participation, 2001 Panel, Wave 8 Topical Module, 2003. See Robert Rector, âoeHow Poor Are Americaâ(TM)s Poor? Examining the âPlagueâ(TM) of Poverty in America,â Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2064, August 27, 2007, p. 13, at http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/08/how-poor-are-americas-poor-examining-the-plague-of-poverty-in-america.
[44]See Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, âoeAir Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What Is Poverty in the United States Today?â Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2575, July 18, 2011, at http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-poverty.
[45]This survey question was asked of a nationally representative sample of 10,000 adults in June 2009. The poll was conducted by a national polling firm on behalf of The Heritage Foundation.
[46]See Robert Rector, Katherine Bradley, and Rachel Sheffield, âoeObama to Spend $10.3 Trillion on Welfare: Uncovering the Full Cost of Means-Tested Welfare or Aid to the Poor,â Heritage Foundation Special Report No. 67, September 16, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/09/obama-to-spend-103-trillion-on-welfare-uncovering-the-full-cost-of-means-tested-welfare-or-aid-to-the-poor.
[47]The average income per quintile is given in DeNavas-Walt et al., âoeIncome, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage, in the United States: 2009,â p. 40. Consumer expenditures per quintile are found in U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey, 2009, âoeQuintiles of Income Before Taxes: Average Annual Expenditures and Characteristics,â at http://www.bls.gov/cex/2009/Standard/quintile.pdf (June 22, 2011).
[48]Lyndon B. Johnson, âoeProposal for a Nationwide War on the Sources of Poverty,â special message to Congress, March 16, 1964, at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1964johnson-warpoverty.html (August 27, 2009).
[49]Lyndon B. Johnson, âoeAnnual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,â January 8, 1964, at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=26787 (August 27, 2009).
[50]Lyndon B. Johnson, quoted in David Zaretsky, President Johnsonâ(TM)s War on Poverty: Rhetoric and History (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1986), p. 49.
[51] Ibid.
[52]Robert E. Rector, Kirk A. Johnson, Patrick F. Fagan, and Lauren R. Noyes, âoeIncreasing Marriage Would Dramatically Reduce Child Poverty,â Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report No. 03â"06, May 20, 2003, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/cda0306.cfm.
[53]Robert E. Rector and Rea S. Hederman, Jr., âoeThe Role of Parental Work in Child Poverty,â Heritage Foundation Center for Data Analysis Report No. 03â"01, January 29, 2003, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/cda-03-01.cfm.
[54]Rector and Sheffield, âoeAir Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox.â
[55]U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Community Planning and Development, 2010 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, 2011, at http://www.hudhre.info/documents/2010HomelessAssessmentReport.pdf (September 7, 2011).
[56]This figure does not include Social Security or Medicare, which are not means-tested.
[57]Zaretsky, President Johnsonâ(TM)s War on Poverty, p. 49.

I've looked through them thoroughly, and can't seem to find a place where their data either is misleading or misrepresenting the facts!

Since you're so certain that what they're spouting is propaganda, you must be able to help me identify how Heritage has 'spun' this or lied.

THANKS for your help!

Except - here's the interesting thing: Americans aren't poor by any reasonable standard.

Here's "poverty" in the US: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor
For example, the average "poor" person actually has more living space (square footage) than the average NONpoor person in Sweden, UK, or France. More than 40% actually own their home.
80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
92 percent of poor households have a microwave.
Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV.
Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70 percent have a VCR.
Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers.
More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
43 percent have Internet access.
One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo.

Read the report; the "poverty" line is just a label, and a politically useful one. There's a vast political machine that exists mainly because it's message is "you don't have enough stuff, we'll take it from those guys (who have way too much) and give it to you". The amusing/sad thing is that the people saying that are the same group of guys that have "too much". PRECISELY the same bunch.

The message is convincing to two groups of people:
- those who are simply greedy and want "more"
- those who feel guilty about what they have ...which currently exceeds 50% of the electorate.

Let's put it another way: the US is the richest country the world has ever seen, and is yet unable to live within its means. This would suggest that the sorts of choices that leave a person "poor" are not limited to a social class, but are endemic to the system, top to bottom.

...if only because it gives me a perfect excuse to send my kid to school ENTIRELY encased in bubble wrap, plus a snorkeling mask and snorkel.

I'm pretty sure when they were younger, my sons would have gleefully done it.

And you're just being a demagogue.

To claim there is no need, no value, no "up side" to having a strong national intelligence organization marks you as irrelevant to the discussion as the blind patriots knee-jerking that "it's fine because I have nothing to hide".

There IS a tremendous value to a strong intelligence capability.
But our society was built on the need for responsible oversight, generally delegated to our elected representatives.

The blame here I place (as usual) on Congress. If they were exercising responsible, firm, intrusive oversight - with absolute, immediate, and unremitting punishment for the people involved (firing certainly, prosecution as required - and not a bunch of chattering ninnies that have proven their inability to be trusted to keep secrets secret (so as to remain closely advised by the agencies without fear of destroying the value of intel and methods with self-serving 'unattributed' leaks), I don't believe we'd have this problem.

But now we have self-interested politicians, committed to maintaining a political divide and advantage at ANY cost (even to the republic), who thus cannot really be trusted with anything important and who block each other (despite both sides' recognizing the need) from reforming anything substantively. I guess we lose then.

It's a fairly black/white alternative; either:
- people are free to do what they want, in which case the collective good is often overlooked (the tragedy of the commons)

or
- someone (be they an individual, a council, a congress, whatever) is given the power to tell people what they must do.

Granted, my comparison is hyperbolic and rhetorical, mainly as a reaction to the fairly blanket condemnation of capitalism in the OP. In the same way that I would characterize "pure" capitalism as anarchic, the opposite would be totalitarianist.

There are many ways individuals can for example collectively decide to act in a way that's good for "the commons"; unfortunately, people eventually always cheat - then one returns to the notion that either they are free agents or they are subjects of 'the agreement and its designated agents'.

Now that my post title earns me a +1 "slashdot loves it", perhaps people will consider this:

*Perhaps* when your country is $trillions$ in debt, one should strongly consider carefully justifying every single program - NSF included - for its expected value and relevance to the national interest.

Lest someone believe I'm being tendentious here, I fully agree that this same metric SHOULD be applied to the bullshit military programs (cancel the LCS - both versions are equally stupid - instantly, for example) as well.

Perhaps EVERY dollar the government spends (you know, since it was taken from some taxpayer at the barrel of a proverbial gun) should be vetted carefully, including congressional haircuts and other benefits. Here's an idea: for every year since congress last passed a budget (you know, their fundamental job) we simply refuse to pay their pensions?

Does market capitalism solve everything? No. It has some glaring weaknesses.

I'll still take it over totalitarianism - no matter how benign or benevolent it says it will be.

Seems to me that any perverse sexual deviance simply needs to reach a certain level of popularity (say, allegedly 10%) and Hollywood will promote it merely as an alternative lifestyle.

Nonsense. The only reason historically that government (and by that I mean any government) didn't spy on everyone was a lack of resources, not some sort of ethical boundary. (Witness the Soviet surveillance state, with their relatively primitive tech.)

Now with massive computing power, ubiquitous observation (you know, to protect us from "terrorists") and our digital-online lives, now they can accomplish nearly-universal surveillance, and do. To expect otherwise is grossly naive.

"As an American" you have a a very particularist, ethnocentric view of the US government: every/any state with a preponderance of power has cheerfully indulged in such behaviors. You expect the US to be different why?

That doesn't excuse it, instead it justifies every effort to constrain and limit the power of government WHEREVER it tries to grow. I find it ironic that many of the people complaining about government prying into their affairs have simultaneously practically invited government up their ass.touting Obamacare.

What?

Your comment drifts from cogent to batshit.

How are gun rights advocates in any way supportive of 'corporations are people' - except insofar as "they disagree with mark_reh"?

I strongly support the second amendment, and I think the 'corporations are people' thing is utterly nonsensical.

I support the second amendment for the simple fact that as a law-abiding citizen who has never broken a law, there should be no prophylactic prohibition against me owning one, presupposing I "might" be dangerous. Simple as that. I don't conceal-carry for precisely the reason you state - the chances of me actually witnessing a crime, and being in a position or skilled enough to contribute usefully is functionally zero.