Posted on 11/11/2007 12:36:48 PM PST by Vision Thing
If this has always been true, perhaps it'll explain why lib dems hate charitable giving: It enrichens the giver. And we all know how lib dems don't want anyone to become richer, especially if its not from the efforts of their big government programs.
It's amazing that this doesn't work for big-goverment programs. You'd figure that the redistribution of wealth would increase economic activity in all cases, but the economic status of the nation during 60s and 70s were proof against this notion.
Also, the article mentions that both individuals and a nation's GDP as a whole become richer through charitable giving. It doesn't mention whether governments become richer when they give money to the poor. I'm betting this is the only time when the Laws of God don't apply.
Probably because the Government is working with stolen money.
And also perhaps because the government gives not to help the recipients, but to make the recipients more dependent on the goverment.
Great point.
Stratton’s giving helped his community. More than likely, he benefited from the increased economic activity resulting from his charitable gifts.
And this goes to the nature of Govt programs, as well as money staying in a community, in the 70’s the economy was much smaller, Govt dollars didn’t have the impact that they have today.
It’s one of the arguments about Capital Flight and the rise of Corporatism.
Govts however, remoe money from local economies and then redistribute it to whomever they are trying to buy off, rather then who provides the best service to the community.
I agree. The percentages won’t change regardless of what you do. Give an uninspired, socially “victimized”, led to believe needs all kinds of help, lazy-ass $500,000. Broke as fast as they can spend it.
The more LOCAL the charity and the oversight of fund dispensation, the more it gets to where it is really needed.
I had a rant on that, but will sum up by saying I totally agree.
Yup. When the funds travels through fewer layers of beauracracy, fewer people are taking their cut of the funds, leaving more for the intended recipients.
God's laws apply in this situation, too. Governments don't benefit, because they're not really being charitable, plus they have to steal the money first.
A much bigger issue, IMHO, is that while the recipient of private charity knows that they have no legal or moral right to demand their gift, much less its continuation, a recipient of government welfare has the legal authority to demand present and future payouts. Government-mandated subsidies are prone to corrupting people's behaviors even when run well. Most welfare systems are designed to maximize that corruption.
Hillary care will be a total failure based on what we know already.
Except for a few bogus charities, like the March of Dimes, most private charities get 50% of their money to the needy. And Churches get 75-80% of their donations to the poor. This is the real reason for public-private programs. Even though it 'violates' the anti-church bias of the government, such programs are 4x to 5x more beneficial than anything the government can do directly.
Certainly local charities are often better than nationwide bureaucracies, though larger organizations are needed in some cases (e.g. a small locally-based hurricane relief organization probably wouldn't be very helpful, since it would have nothing to do when its area wasn't hit, or be totally swamped with its own problems when it was). The primary difference between charity and government welfare, though, isn't size, but rather entitlement. If there's a law that says people who sit at home on the couch all day will get $X/month, then sitting at home on the couch all day becomes a perfectly legitimate way of "earning" $X/month.
Be very careful with terms like "failure" and "success", since they are extremely viewpoint-dependent. I believe one of Hillary's goals is to trash the health-care system that's available to the middle class, and I believe that Hillarycare, if implemented, would be extremely successful at doing so. Many other liberal programs which are widely derided as failures on FR are likewise very successful when one recognizes their real goals.
The difficulty is in getting others to see what the real function of all those programs is (i.e. pushing 'equality' between the lower and middle class, thus protecting the elite class from competition)
I wonder what you think of supply side economics.
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