Dinesh D'Souza on Hypocrisy on the left

[El_Machinae]

It's not "instead" though. One can support welfare AND donate money to charities at the same time. If you think there is a problem and that welfare is needed to completely solve that system, would it not make sense to at least donate your excess money to help the situation as much as you personally can? It's once again "I won't commit until every one else commits/is forced to commit!".

It not a counter to the welfare-argument but certainly make the person look like someone who doesn't really do anything other than talking.

My minimum expectation is that they should at least donate to match the tax level that they support. If they're "pro" their cohort paying an additional 0.5% of tax, then they should be at least donating that

 

[Farm Boy]

A fat man should certainly not advocate subsidizing farmers.

Too late!

 

[BvBPL]

Works better to what end? The analysis of what is superior as an effective form of charity to alieve ills is different from determining what is morally upright.

The Gates Foundation, for example, has a number of advantages based on the centralization of resources relative to an aggregate of giving from individuals that comprise the same amount of resources. Those advantages do not absolve individual givers of their duty to be charitable. There are also advantages to distributive giving versus centralized giving as well, but those don't exhaust Bill Gates's responsibilities either.

 

[Farm Boy]

What end is there ever? Satisfaction, empowerment, meaningful connection between citizens, yadda yadda?

 

[Cutlass]

Yet it seems to me, and I think I've read some actual study things that bear this out(not remembering very well), that as people go up in prosperity they generally go down in generosity. Like, the less shirts you have access to yourself the more likely you are to give one away. I don't think lots of people making the effort of voting every 4th year in a manner which they think will force the redistribution of shirts takes care of this.

And this is exactly why there is no moral or ethical argument for leaving charity exclusively in the hands of private donations. It just would never work.

 

[BvBPL]

This article evaluates charitable giving from super philanthropists such as Zuckerberg against governmental and corporate giving.

 

[Gary Childress]

This article evaluates charitable giving from super philanthropists such as Zuckerberg against governmental and corporate giving.

I got a "webpage not found" error. Any clue on what the gist of the article is? Thanks. [EDIT: Sorry. Figured it out. Never mind]

So here's the concluding paragraph:

Yet philanthropic investment in global projects continues to increase. Anne Petersen, the president of the Global Philanthropy Alliance, told me, “American philanthropy used to be all about giving locally. But there’s been a dramatic trend toward international giving, and that’s only going to continue.” It’s reasonable to lament the fact that a small number of billionaires have so much power over which problems get dealt with and which do not. But they have that power precisely because they are spending so much of their money to solve global problems. We, as a country, are not.

 

[BvBPL]

Fixed it. Turns out you need to keep the http in the universal resource locator. Which I guess is helpful for all those times we link to FTPs and telnet resources. Anyway, The article suggests that individual mega philanthropy provides more public good than corporate philanthropy, is less likely to be derailed by politics than governmental programs, is more global than individual traditional giving, and has the advantage of being relatively unbounded in terms of scope of time.

 

[jackelgull]

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary

I pretty much agree verbatim with King here. Class systems corrupt the relationships between people, whether or not the wealthy use their wealth for the public good. That said,for every Zuckerberg, there is a Walton. 18 billion dollars, and only $6,000 donated to charity in 2005.

 

[Farm Boy]

And this is exactly why there is no moral or ethical argument for leaving charity exclusively in the hands of private donations. It just would never work.

I think they probably do different things. One method sets the system so that it makes good works effective in the macro, but it probably takes the micro to actually drive the good home. Don't they compliment each other? As in, when you have a lack in either of the categories you just leave a lot of misery on the table?

 

[jackelgull]

I think they probably do different things. One method sets the system so that it makes good works effective in the macro, but it probably takes the micro to actually drive the good home. Don't they compliment each other? As in, when you have a lack in either of the categories you just leave a lot of misery on the table?

Cutlass never said leave it only in the hands of the government though. He simply said that exclusively relying on private charities don't work.

 

[Cutlass]

I think they probably do different things. One method sets the system so that it makes good works effective in the macro, but it probably takes the micro to actually drive the good home. Don't they compliment each other? As in, when you have a lack in either of the categories you just leave a lot of misery on the table?

Private charities do do good work. The caveats here being that the ones who are actually intended for helping the less fortunate. Many things which according to the tax code are charities do not in fact have anything to do with aiding the poor or people in trouble. And, in no small number of cases, the charities which are about aiding people fail at their mission for various reason, or are run by people who have an agenda other than simply helping people. So you get the Red Cross utterly failing in Haiti. Or church groups more focused on saving souls than bodies, and so are spending the money to influence people more than aid them.

So the hybrid model of government money and private delivery is not that good of one. There's no accountability. So my uncle runs a small town church food pantry. Half his money comes from FEMA. That works. Does it work better than just giving the poor more foodstamps? Nope. And what if the other church in the other town, the guy running the show is pocketing some of that money? Is there a reporting method by which FEMA could catch and prosecute that guy? Nope. And it is very inconvient to the recipients as well. They get less choice, and it uses a lot of their time to do it. Occasionally around here I'll drive by a church that runs a food pantry out of the back of a truck. People will stand in line for half a day to pick up the 1 or 2 bags of groceries that they are allowed. That's time they can't be spending looking for work or caring for their families.

GW Bush's faith based initiatives program was well intentioned. But not successful in practice. Now that's mostly the fault of people in Washington, not the people on the ground in cities and small towns. For all of GWB's 'compassionate conservatism', he was surrounded in office by people who's primary religious convictions were crony capitalism and international imperialism. And those are the people who set and executed most of the agenda.

But even when money did get to the faith based service groups, it wasn't necessarily well spent. The most effective, and cost effective, aid programs are usually the simplest ones. Just give people money. With as few restrictions on it as possible.

Local governments are better at providing housing, and a range of social services such as child care, education, counseling, job search. But in all of American history the only agency which has ever done a competent job of income support is the US federal government.

That's not to say that private charities don't provide good help. Every little bit counts. But they are marginal players to the problem as a whole. A week ago my mother made a mistake and cooked up a gallon of baked beans for a church dinner which was actually scheduled for this week. So I got home from work and she tells me she doesn't know what to do with it all. I looked up some stuff on the net, made some calls, and took it to a soup kitchen at a local church. 2 nights a week the place cooks a dinner for a dozen or 20 people. Now I'm sure those people need it, they're grateful, and are better off for it. And the volunteers running it are good people with the best intentions. But this is a town of 50,000 people, and more than 20 of them are poor. And even that 20 people are only getting 2 hot meals a week out of it.

We in America do a pretty piss poor job of aiding the poor amongst us. But take the federal money out of it, and what you have left, no matter how well intentioned, is a travesty.

 

[Farm Boy]

Cutlass never said leave it only in the hands of the government though. He simply said that exclusively relying on private charities don't work.

<wink>

Cutlass, I tender that governments on the ground are very much susceptible to the things that make privatized efforts ineffective and inefficient as well. Sure, they have coercive methods to drum up contribution available to them that would get private citizens arrested, and that helps. But I still think you need both. There are going to be people that need help regardless of what government programs are available, and these people need a community they participate in if nothing else. Club Goods, as El Mac terms them, do actually do good for their members. There is something about being part of a group of people that are spending time as they choose that is different from being served by a government employee on the clock. That doesn't mean both aren't frequently a goodness, just that they are different.