True, but my point was that you figure out at what point it's better to donate the marginal dollar, and you donate everything beyond that.
That's tautological, if you absorb all relevant factors into "better to donate". My point was you can't just project your current mind into the recipient's situation and then project how much they would value the dollar.
In addition to this, personal factors such as lack of long-term commitment devices, probability of motivation-breaking also have to be integrated.
On the upside, each additional dollar strenghtenes the market for effective charities, which incentivizes future people to create better and more attractive charities. (This is similar t...
I'd like to hear from people about a process they use to decide how much to give to charity. Personally, I have very high income, and while we donate significant money in absolute terms, in relative terms the amount is <1% of our post-tax income. It seems to me that it's too little, but I have no moral intuition as to what the right amount is.
I have a good intuition on how to allocate the money, so that's not a problem.
Background: I have a wife and two kids, one with significant health issues (i.e. medical bills - possibly for life), most money we spend goes to private school tuition x 2, the above mentioned medical bills, mortgage, and miscellaneous life expenses. And we max out retirement savings.
If you have some sort of quantitative system where you figure out how much to spend on charity, please share. If you just use vague feelings, and you think there can be no reasonable quantitative system, please tell me that as well.
Update: as suggested in the comments, I'll make it more explicit: please also share how you determine how much to give.