Exactly. There is so much useless shit in the federal budget, along with a massive military and a failed war on drugs. Plenty of room to cut spending.
Problem is that while you were reading history books, I was actually working with non-profits feeding the needy. They were hit hard when Bush cut social spending, and you know what? They got over it. People and companies stepped up and donated more, even as the economy got worse.
But all that is besides the point since welfare represents about 6% of the federal budget.
How the fuck do you guys still not have a proper health care system? The biggest change ever made won’t even take effect until 2014!
Anyone else get the sense this ship is sinking? Don’t mind me, I’m just going to slowly start making my way towards the lifeboats while putting on this life jacket.
Ah, okay. Now your own personal anecdote is considered evidence? These economic arguments get worse and worse. Why don’t you post a cite that shows that the decrease in government spending (or services or whatever metric) was matched with an equivalent rise in private sector spending (or other similar metric) in the categories we’re concerned about?
And the fact that you can dismiss historical events so casually in a discussion about economics I think is fairly clear evidence that you aren’t actually interested in economics, but rather you are peddling ideology.
Why are you limiting the discussion to welfare? The government provides an immense amount of safety-net funding outside of welfare (e.g, government on all levels is one of the biggest spenders on health care in the US).
The ship isn’t sinking. We’re not even close to the highest debt/GDP ratio we’ve ever had.
Or, as an alternative to a cite, why don’t you lay out the model under which a private solution can guarantee people a basic level of X? Here, X could be food, or health care or clothing or whatever you’d like.
lets talk politicians spending only what is taken in and going to prison if they don’t.
Under what law?
ETA: All we have to do is raise taxes; problem solved.
That’s a poor idea, sometimes you need to go into debt in the short term. The problem is that they are unwilling to raise taxes to pay what is owed, not that they ever went into debt at all.
Hey, emacknight, go take a look at the USDA reports on household food insecurity. In 1999, around 89.9% of households were food secure, and that steadily dropped until it was only 85% in 2008. This flatly contradicts your assertion that private charities stepped up to fill the void. Overall food security outcomes grew worse during this period.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/FANRR8/
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err83/
I have to amend my previous post. Starting in 2000, food security begin to drop, but then it fluctuated around, sometimes coming close to what it was before, before dropping again in the wake of the financial crisis. My overall point still stands, though, which is that private activity often does not fill the gap on these sorts of issues. At least it seems that the private sector has difficult filling the gap during periods of economic stress. This makes sense when you think about it, since during economic downturns, people have less money to donate, but more people need help.
Before I get out of here, I’ll add one more thing. This whole charity argument is another example of trying to have it both ways. There’s usually no rational financial interest in donating to charity (there may be non-financial reasons to do so). So, we’re supposed to assume that our hypothetical investor is going to rationally respond to increased taxes by irrationally leaving money on the table and then further irrationally donating to charity. All of this amounts to ad-hoc model selecting, rather than a serious economic discussion.
“Charities are not passive receptacles of contributions, as they have so often been
treated in the past, but are active players in the market for donations.”
http://igpa.uillinois.edu/system/files/wp94-govtgrants.pdf
This study looked at the effects of government grants on charitable organizations, and found that their behavior changes in response. When they get more government money, they decrease their fundraising initiatives. The obvious result is that after government funding gets cut there is a lag while charities rebuild their fundraising programs and get the message out to potential donors.
In response, charitable giving goes up, in fact it’s up 3.8% from last year.
As you pointed out, food banks were overwhelmed after the crash. “Just a week ago, the Houston Food Bank put out a plea for help as they deal with a demand unlike anything they’ve seen before. It’s a message Houstonians heard and are now answering.”
Households making more than $100k per year would rather donate to charity than pay taxes. And oddly enough, when they do donate it decreases tax revenue, meaning the government has less to give.
What you should actually conclude from your sites is that the government isn’t any more capable of feeding the hungry than private charities.
I was all set to, and then I realized you can’t show me a case where the government is able to either. I was thinking about the Canadian health care system that provides more than the basic level of health care. But it also relies heavily on private donations to do that. As an example, SickKids Foundation was established in 1972 to help raises money for The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto (a horrible name for a hospital). Government funding isn’t sufficient.
If you want to discuss historical events involving hunger: neither Soviet Russia, Communist China, nor Cuba were able to keep their populations from starving. Do you know of a country that has?
Soviet famine of 1930–1933 - Wikipedia]Soviet famine of 1932–1933, the direct result of the government trying to guarantee people a basic level of X, but in the end causing them to not have X.
List of foreign donations to the US following Hurricane Katrina
And how good was the government and making use of that money?
“It turns out that, like so much of the federal response to the crisis, the largest influx of foreign assistance to the US in memory was met with foot-dragging and clumsy bureaucracy. None of the donated funds has actually made its way to evacuees.”
I’m going to have to rely on your description, since I don’t have time to peruse this in depth until the weekend. However, if this is correct, then it seems that people behave irrationally in response to increased solicitation activity by charities. So, are you willing to admit that people often do make financial decisions which are not rational from a purely financial perspective?
Again, relying on your description, this is an anecdote and not data. I don’t know why you think anyone should listen to you when you insist on doing this.
A tax deduction is a government subsidy. Why do you keep pointing at government activity as evidence of private sector capability?
Hmm. Let’s go back and look where I said that government funding is sufficient. Oh, wait, I didn’t. Do you need to resort to strawmen now because you are completely incapable of defending your original thesis in this thread?
The Canadians have very heavy government involvement in their health care sector. We do too, but in a completely different manner. So, instead of spitting out nonsense about how charities can fill the gap, why don’t you just admit what your own data shows, which is that charities operate on top of a government back bone, and that government activity is a necessary component.
Ha, ha, ha! Nothing I said in this thread could even be taken to support anything like a command economy approach to anything. This is strawmen argument of the basest sort, and it shows you have no ability to defend your own arguments.
You also listed the tsunamis. Remind me what air lift capability the Red Cross has? Oh, wait. They don’t have any. They are completely dependent on government activity to distribute supplies.
If you want to argue that private charities can provide a useful addition to government activity, I have no problem with that. However, if your argument is that there is a model in which the private sector can completely guarantee a minimum level of X, there is nothing in this thread you have posted that even comes close to showing that. So, pick a thesis and tell us clearly what it is, because right now I can’t figure out what exactly you are arguing. And try to avoid resorting to straw men if you want anyone to take you seriously.
Hee. I just looked at this cite, and it completely supports my position in its very first line:
So, as I stated, private charities often can’t come through (my actual position and not your strawman one), and here you post a cite showing that for 3 years straight, private charitable donations dropped. Which is exactly my point. For those of us concerned about the three years in question, then no, the private sector did not come through in an adequate fashion (based on this cite, I suspect the story is a bit more complicated). But thanks for posting a cite that supports my position and not yours.
Oh, man. What an astute observation. You nailed us, bucky - we just loves us some extra taxes on de poor folks. And shit.
The fact that no one would play the lotteries any more.
Actually, this whole proposal is a good example of why progressive income taxes stifle productivity. You increase the tax rate, the incentive to earn more goes down, or in this case, the incentive to buy lottery tickets goes down.
Oh not this shit again. There is a difference between 90% taxation and raising the tax rate by 3%
Wait… You think Emacknight is a liberal? He’s some mutant form of libertarian.
50%
If you started a thread that said “THE MOON IS MADE OUT OF CHEESE!!!” Then you would get some traffic too