Tax returns for 2009 show that Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, earned $333,000 and gave a paltry $4,820 — or 1.4 percent — to charity. That’s well below the 3 to 5 percent the average American gives.

President Obama gave above that average — about 6 percent — but he grossed $5.5 million, solidifying his status as one of those evil rich people.

The takeaway: Biden is eager for you to be generous with your money. For himself, not so much.

Of course, generosity at the point of a gun is no generosity at all. That’s the divergence between liberals, who advocate forced charity through government edict, and conservatives, who believe in free-choice generosity. The former is motivated by statism and power, the latter by religious (predominantly Judeo-Christian) values.

It’s little wonder, then, that conservatives are more generous than liberals. And they don’t need to be forced to do it.