The government can't do anything right

[BluePriest]

However, would you agree that overall people could plausibly donate 0.2% of the money they would have been taxed funding welfare if they did not have to fund welfare?

could? yes.  would? no.  if people did not mind donating to other people, they would be calling for fixing holes and making it more efficient (which i almost never hear) as opposed to getting rid of it entirely (which i hear rather often).  charties rely on the kindness of people.  unfortunately, people as a whole are not very kind.

Its not the community as a whole you look at.

Im a pizza delivery guy. I go on an average of 100 deliveries a week. 2/3 deliveries I dont recieve a tip on. However, i get an average of about 2 dollars a tip. Why? Because for every 2 people that dont tip, I have somone who tips me for 3. And Im not talking a big order either. I got a 10 dollar tip for delivering a pizza and 2 liter to a trucker one day.

Sure the majority of people wont give, but the people that do make up for it.

the majority do not tip, so the ones that do have to give for 3 in order for you to make a decent amount of tips.  if everyone tipped, then the burden on those that do give is less for you to make a decent wage.  people see you, look you in the eye, and dont tip you.  why do you expect people, the majority of whom have never seen a homeless person, and have never had to skip a meal to give anything at all?  the vast majority will not give, and the majority of people who do not give are those that can afford to give the most.  its people who HAVE experienced going hungry and no what its like that want to give, but they cant afford to.  some give what they can, other donate their time.  cutting taxes and expecting to help the same amount of people through donations is equivalent to leaving out a jar of candy on halloween with a sign that says "please take one".

reference?

eh. We are getting into hearsay and opinions now. People can argue back and forth at this point and get nowhere unless some astounding new facts are found.

[russianspy1234]

reference?

eh. We are getting into hearsay and opinions now. People can argue back and forth at this point and get nowhere unless some astounding new facts are found.

yeah looking up the statistics and so far it seems i was wrong on that point.  the diffusion of responsibility point still stands though.  also, donations are tax exempt.  if people wanted to, they could donate money to a qualified charity and reduce their taxes.

[BluePriest]

reference?

eh. We are getting into hearsay and opinions now. People can argue back and forth at this point and get nowhere unless some astounding new facts are found.

yeah looking up the statistics and so far it seems i was wrong on that point.  the diffusion of responsibility point still stands though.  also, donations are tax exempt.  if people wanted to, they could donate money to a qualified charity and reduce their taxes.

problem is that you switch to an itemized deduction at that point, and therefor unless you donated a lot of money (I got about 1000$ back, so Id have to donate 1 months pay+ all its tip money)
then you wouldnt get as much as the standard. Therefor it actually raises the taxes in that way.

[russianspy1234]

reference?

eh. We are getting into hearsay and opinions now. People can argue back and forth at this point and get nowhere unless some astounding new facts are found.

yeah looking up the statistics and so far it seems i was wrong on that point.  the diffusion of responsibility point still stands though.  also, donations are tax exempt.  if people wanted to, they could donate money to a qualified charity and reduce their taxes.

problem is that you switch to an itemized deduction at that point, and therefor unless you donated a lot of money (I got about 1000$ back, so Id have to donate 1 months pay+ all its tip money)
then you wouldnt get as much as the standard. Therefor it actually raises the taxes in that way.

im not saying the system is perfect and doesnt need any change whatsoever.  it is clearly inefficient and DOES need to be changed.  doing away with it entirely is not the answer though.

[OldTrees]

However, would you agree that overall people could plausibly donate 0.2% of the money they would have been taxed funding welfare if they did not have to fund welfare?

could? yes.  would? no.  if people did not mind donating to other people, they would be calling for fixing holes and making it more efficient (which i almost never hear) as opposed to getting rid of it entirely (which i hear rather often).  charties rely on the kindness of people.  unfortunately, people as a whole are not very kind.

no i have not spent a lot of time in the inner city.  and yet, i still see plenty of homeless people begging for money, or just sleeping on the ground, in the poorer areas of where i live.

From this and other comments I can see that you are a pessimist. This is not a criticism.
I personally would expect, on average, a sum amounting to 1% of money not being sent to welfare anymore to be donated. You expect less than 0.2%, on average, would be donated.

You are right that the Poor sacrifice more despite the Rich donating more. However it appears we are both underestimating how generous Americans are.

Q. How much do the rich in America give, compared with everyone else?
A. In order for a person to give money away, he or she must have it in the first place. Not surprisingly then, income and charitable giving in America are positively related. For example, in the year 2000, families earning $20,000 or less gave an average of about $450 to charity, while families earning more than $100,000 gave away an average of a bit more than $3,000. The top 10 percent of households in income are responsible for at least a quarter of all the money contributed to charity, and households with total wealth exceeding $1 million give about half of all charitable donations. The American rich are generous, on average.

Yet when we measure monetary giving as a percentage of income in order to ascertain the level of one’s “sacrifice,” we find a surprising result: it is low-income working families that are the most generous group in America, giving away about 4.5 percent of their income on average. This compares to about 2.5 percent among the middle class, and 3 percent among high-income families.

So it would seem that even with 1/3 of private donations going to religion

About a third of individual gifts go toward sacramental activities, primarily supporting houses of worship. The rest goes to secular activities, such as education, health, and social welfare.

that still leaves ~0.8% per dollar diverted from welfare as a low ball estimate. The target was 0.15%

[Belthus]

So would those of you who champion charity over government social spending predict that those US states that have relatively low social spending and relatively high charitable giving do better on various outcomes such as health, education, poverty, social mobility, etc.?

[Essence]

There's not enough time for me to say what I really want to say, so let me just point out two things:

Channel One can turn $1 into enough food for at least 5 meals that feed people in need!
Your $25 gift provides a 10 day supply of food for a family of four.

This is taken out of context.  The very next line on the page says (paraphrased) "We take the millions of pounds of food and use your cash gifts to process it into meals".  Well, sure -- if you don't count the cost of the food itself, food stamps sure as hell don't cost $1 per meal, either.

The fact is that people do contribute, and in fact an increase in disposable income (that would result from cutting all welfare-related taxes) will mean more contributions, based on a little friend I like to call the Law of Averages.

All this blather about charity is irrelevant for one simple reason: private charity cannot ever guarantee that everyone who applies will be served.  Ever.  The only entities who can make that guarantee are governmental entities, because only they have the power to tax, and thus the power to completely assure adequate funding.

[BluePriest]

All this blather about charity is irrelevant for one simple reason: private charity cannot ever guarantee that everyone who applies will be served.  Ever.  The only entities who can make that guarantee are governmental entities, because only they have the power to tax, and thus the power to completely assure adequate funding.

Tell that to Libya or any other country that was taken in an uprising. I bet the charities looked pretty good there (note not a serious comment)

[russianspy1234]

All this blather about charity is irrelevant for one simple reason: private charity cannot ever guarantee that everyone who applies will be served.  Ever.  The only entities who can make that guarantee are governmental entities, because only they have the power to tax, and thus the power to completely assure adequate funding.

Tell that to Libya or any other country that was taken in an uprising. I bet the charities looked pretty good there (note not a serious comment)

did libya have any government social programs?

[OldTrees]

There's not enough time for me to say what I really want to say, so let me just point out two things:

Channel One can turn $1 into enough food for at least 5 meals that feed people in need!
Your $25 gift provides a 10 day supply of food for a family of four.

This is taken out of context.  The very next line on the page says (paraphrased) "We take the millions of pounds of food and use your cash gifts to process it into meals".  Well, sure -- if you don't count the cost of the food itself, food stamps sure as hell don't cost $1 per meal, either.

The fact is that people do contribute, and in fact an increase in disposable income (that would result from cutting all welfare-related taxes) will mean more contributions, based on a little friend I like to call the Law of Averages.

All this blather about charity is irrelevant for one simple reason: private charity cannot ever guarantee that everyone who applies will be served.  Ever.  The only entities who can make that guarantee are governmental entities, because only they have the power to tax, and thus the power to completely assure adequate funding.

Thanks for catching that Essence. I was rushed (class was soon) and did not check thoroughly to see if that ratio matched the $10 bags of food Ch1 purchases. It does not (closer to $80 per week for family of four but I cannot be accurate enough for my tastes with that estimate.) and therefore the previous data on the cost of private vs public is not very useful. (The volunteerism data is still valid)

True charity cannot force people to provide for others.
So the question of whether "Negative Right from Theft" or "Positive Duty to sustain Life" is the correct theory to apply.

I am assuming Deontological because the other two types of moral theory would answer "maybe".
I did not include Positive Right to Life because it is still impossible to provide immortality to every potential person. (I am still open to the possibility of being incorrect on this.)

[Essence]

BTW, regarding the United States and the right to life/negative right from murder thing:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government

The entire United States is founded on the idea that you have a right to life, and if the government ever tries to take it away from you, you have the right to a different government.  That's not a negative right from murder -- it's the first and foremost of the inalienable rights upon which the entire country is based. 

So your plan for proving everyone with unlimited life is to sustain their life until they die of old age. Forgive me but finite life is not unlimited life. Finite life is possible to provide to everyone with a length depending on resources and technology. However unlimited life (aka Immortality) is still impossible.

This is such an extraordinary stretch that it would be funny if you didn't appear to be taking yourself seriously.  You started by talking about a market:

Unfortunately while the Supply Curve for Food and Water is sufficiently elastic, transportation costs result in the Supply curve being too high for some groups of people.

And then when your claim was challenged, rather than defend it, you retreated into some abstract B.S. about the meaning of "unlimited supplies of life" and the biological limits of human mortality.  It's a self-serving bunch of crap.  The real-world facts are that it is not only possible and viable, but cheaper for society as a whole (remember Million Dollar Murray (http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_13_a_murray.html)) to SOLVE the problems of homelessness, hunger, and poverty than it is to 'manage' them the way we are now.  The only reason that it's not happening is because of the irrationality of the Public Goods Game: conservatives would actually literally RATHER PAY MORE and HAVE LESS than allow someone else to survive off of the taxes they pay without working themselves.

That's the greatest irony of all -- because liberals accuse conservatives of being greedy when the truth is that real greed would say "screw it, just give them apartments and government cheese, it'll cost less than keeping them on the streets."  No, conservatives aren't driven by greed, they're driven by something much less rational -- fear.

Philosophy and moral theory be damned, economics supports liberal social policy.  I don't care what people should do from a moral standpoint, I'd be happy if they actually understood and acted in their own enlightened self-interest.

[johannhowitzer]

cutting military spending and lowering taxes proportionally will give people more disposable income to.

Absolutely, though that's a totally different issue; there are a lot of unnecessary policies and programs that require egregious taxation.

the problem with your idea is that, while it could work, the only way to really know is to try and then count the dead bodies.

Dunno if you realize this, but you're repeating me here.  Go back and read one of my earlier posts; I can't be bothered to link it if you can't be bothered to think outside the moment.

will there be as many as i think?  probably not.  will there be 0? definitely not.

It's more complex than you make it sound, though - we're not weighing the consequences of one decision against the status quo, we are comparing two possible futures.  Will the number of people who starve if welfare spending is gradually cut be greater than the number of lives saved by the availability of the extra funds to charitable organizations?  My entire argument has been brought to bear on an answer of Yes to that question - which makes your above quote more of a strawman than anything.

there is a psychological phenomenon called diffusion of responsibility.  you are more likely to get help with your car on an almost empty country road than you are on a busy city street.  people on a busy street will see others and think "oh someone else will help them".  how bad would it be if you had the entire country to diffuse to?

This phenomenon is already in play, yet people currently contribute enough to fuel every single charitable organization in the nation, and some overseas (that's a LOT of money).  Going back to one of my previous posts... again (sigh), the law of averages dictates that there will be a giant increase in contributions, and you failed to address that point.  Your above quote seems almost fatalistic at first, but it really just boils down to "not everyone will help."  As BP's pizza-example illustrates, we don't need everyone to.  Just the people that already are - that'd be more than enough.