It seems reasonable to me that government social programs can be replaced by a charitable mandate.
Here is how it would work. A law would be passed that would require people to give 10% of their income either directly to the poor or to a private institution, or to a govenment social program open to recieving donations. Those that fail to pay will be stripped of their assets and made dependent upon the system which they have cheated. You would record where you gave and reciever would record from whence they got. The charity recieved would count toward fuflfillment of the governments promised obligation. Oversite would be provided by the IRS.
What this mandate does is cut out the slow,inefficient, and ineffective middle man(the govenment) and exchanges it for highly accountible, efficient, and effective givers and charities.
I would appreciate your thoughts on the matter. Thanks --Joshua
As you have proposed it, this is essentially a flat tax, which is inherently regressive and harmful to the poor for reasons too complicated for me to go into at this time.
It doesn’t sound like a particularly efficient or simple system either, because rather than having everyone’s taxes processed through a central organism, you’ve now got potentially thousands of agencies responsible for tracking and accurately reporting said “donations”, and it reduces all social necessities currently funded by taxes to the level of having to beg the taxpayer to donate to them instead of, say, “Gay Witches for Abortion” or “Furry Arsonists Legal Defense Fund”.
The most likely result of your proposal would be a huge number of scam artists pocketing most of this forced charity for themselves. And the guaranteed result would be a greater burden on the poor and middle class, as is the nature and purpose of flat tax proposals.
Besides all the other problems mentioned, what makes you assume that a government run program is less efficient?
It’s theoretically a good idea. In the United States as it exists now, special interest groups would hamstring it. Atheists would demand that religious charities not be allowed to receive money. Feminists would insist that every group that received money had to distribute birth control, &c… &c…
Fundamentally most of the federal government exists to ensure that certain special interest groups, corporations, and unions get money and power. Those groups will never voluntarily let the system change, unless the changes are guaranteed to leave them with even more money and power.
That could be fixed by requiring everyone to pay the amount they pay now, but allowing each person to distribute it according to what joshuagenes proposes.
I want people to be specific when they say the Idea is lame and get into details, Why?, how?, etc.
Consider the efficiency of direct giving. My Grandmother is on Social
Security and I pay Social Security tax. If I give her the money directly then there is no need for the social security administration and the costs associated. By this measure more money can end up in the hands of the poor.
In reality, what would happen is that thousands of scammers would pop up to take the money with promises it’ll go to charity, and keep it for themselves. And that the money would go to to causes according to popularity instead of need even when the money actually went where intended. And given the deep, widespread hatred towards the poor in this country I expect there’d be a concerted effort to ensure as little as possible of that money ended up in the hands of the poor.
Government charity exists towards the poor because for centuries private charity failed miserably.
It is true that scammers exist currently in private charity but it is also true that people scam the government charities as well. I can easily make the case that it is government charity that has failed here is a link to the rising poverty rates as the government has spent more and more.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_poverty_rate_timeline.gif and the government is horrible in many other ways here is a study making the comparison between government and private charity. http://mises.org/journals/jls/21_2/21_2_1.pdf
True, and also consider the flip side…programs like WIC, TANF, Food Stamps, Medicaid, etc have relatively fixed expenses. They have to make payroll, keep the lights on, and distribute the benefits that recipients depend on, each and every month. That won’t happen when they are funded at the whim of people that may choose to give the money to some other program.
So just Social Security would require something like 37% more than all the charitable giving under the OP’s formula.
But let’s say charitable giving increased to actually make up 100% of whatever the government would be spending on human services. Except we charitable givers are also contributing to animal shelters, the Sierra Club, organized religion, art museums, public television and all sorts of other worthy efforts. What happens when people who never gave to the food bank – instead donating their money to pay for dental care for poor kids – show up at the local food bank? Does the food bank bill the free dental clinic?
What about people who work for charities? Are they expected take care of people for free AND donate 10% of their income to other charities?
Joshuagenes – what happens to people on Social Security who don’t have grandchildren? What happens to you when it’s time for you to retire and you’ve spent your retirement money supporting your grandmother?
Not hardly. What would more likely happen is that the Catholic Bishops and extreme right would try to forbid any of this money going to Planned Parenthood or for charities that give out birth control or support abortion rights.
Social Security and Medicare are extremely efficient, largely through their scale. How much of the charities budgets would be devoted to advertising in order to get their share of the money? How efficient would that be?
You need to account for the increased efficiency of private giving in your calculation. As far as your concerns… I have faith in people like you to draw attention to potential problems, start charities, and take care of the matter quicker and more efficiently than the government could every do. If people have spent their retirement or have fallen into poverty will you not take care of them? Won’t you also be taken care of?
People will turn over their “tax” to fund charities they sympathize with. So expect lots of donations to flow to the Cute Puppies for Cute Children campaign, but little to flow to counseling services for Runaway Teens with Potty Mouths and Body Piercings. Or supportive transitional housing for ex-felons. These programs get some government support. Take that away and they’ve got nothing.
Charities aren’t required to help any and everyone. They don’t have to help the dirty atheist that knocks on their door. I don’t want my tax dollars supporting those kinds of places. I know they do now, but at least the government provides a secular alternative.
