This article is misleading in several ways, but just to pick the most obvious:
1. The rich have more to give away, so they can give more away. The obvious test is to look not at what they give away, but what they have left. Their lifestyle appears unimpeded by their giving. The McCains, for example, may give more to charity as a percentage of income, than the Obamas. But after giving whatever it is they give, the McCains are left with eight homes, the Obamas with one. The life-style that goes with the ownership of eight homes is obviously a little different than that of the Obamas as well. John McCain, for example, reported personally paying out over a quarter of a million dollars in just one year for household help.
2. The rich have various tax-shelter devices available to shelter a large portion of their income from U.S. income tax, so that their real income is usually not the reported income. Accounting for the wealth of even one typically rich family could be almost a full-time job for a professional C.P.A., structuring and tracking off-shore accounts, "sprinkler" trust funds and dummy interlocking corporations and voting trusts.
3. The article is fundamentally mistaken in stating that <<[the] top 5 percent (those making more than $153,542, the group whose taxes Obama seeks to raise) pay 60 percent of all federal income taxes. >> In actual fact, the group whose taxes Obama seeks to raise is the group earning over $250,000.00 in annual income.
4. I've seen the figures before showing the relative percentages of income given by conservative families and liberal families. It sort of reminded me of the factoid I've seen in several places now that poor, elderly, black women living alone are the biggest contributors to televangelists like Swaggart and Benny Whatsizname and the others. Simple people with simple demands on life don't need a hell of a lot of money for themselves. Liberals with a very high regard for education want something more for their kids than some anti-evolution Bible College in the depths of the Ozarks, they want to attend theatre, opera, night-clubs, etc. and they want to save for a comfortable old age. So, sensibly, they save more and give less. They're smart enough to know that giving to charity solves nobody's problems because of the haphazard, drop-in-the-bucket nature of the gifts, it's really meant to make the giver feel good about himself, and they're also smart enough to know that government action CAN change social conditions. So maybe it's not very nice to say this, but charitable giving is for dummies, smart people who really want to make a difference rather than just indulge their own egos know that only government policy will make the changes that are needed.