Debate: Are enough EAs earning to give?

[Toby Tremlett🔹]

Here’s a Career Conversations Week debate for you:

---

Clarifications:

• We can treat the 15% figure from the 2024 Rethink Priorities EA Survey results as an approximation of the current %. However, I’m sure this number varies a lot based on your definition of ‘earning to give’. I.e. It’s likely that some of these people are 10% pledgers who aren’t actively maximising their earning potential/​ exposure to upside.

• This poll is about the % of EAs, not the % of people in the world. I’m guessing everyone here would agree that more people in the world should earn to give.

Table from this Forum post

Reading list:

• The Future of Earning to Give (@PeterMcCluskey).

  • This post argues that “Earning to Give should be the default strategy for most Effective Altruists”.

• A robust earning to give ecosystem is better for EA (@abrahamrowe)

  • A case for broader norms of donation, not purely ‘Earning to Give’.

• Earn To Give $1M/​year or Work Directly? (@Yonatan Cale)

  • This post sets an interesting question to orgs “how much would a successful job applicant have to earn for you to rather they did E2G than work for you?”