Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973
It's OK - no need to go searching for references. As for what you say about government, there's no doubt that there is a lot of waste and poor usage of money, but with regard to the end recipient of government or charity help being spendthrift or wasteful with what they are given, I've never seen anything to support that view.
Well, you've got me curious now. I will make some time and do a Google search and see what, if anything, comes up.
I believe, but am not positively certain, that even when a private citizen gives to charity, the amount that is siphoned off by the management of the charity can be quite substantial. Not that long ago there was a list published somewhere, maybe on ESMB or more likely on Fox News showing how much of the money given to various charities made it through to the intended needy people; it also showed the yearly salary drawn by the CEO of the charity.
Just going from memory, I believe that the "United Way" was the least efficent charity. Their CEO had an annual salary of around $700 thousand and something like 23% of the money reached the needy. The best performance was by the Salvation Army. Their CEO was drawing down only about $55k per year and a little over 80% of the money reached the needy. On average, CEO's were earning around $200 K and around 50% of the money was reaching the needy. These stats are totally from memory and could be wrong. That is what I am going to attempt to find out in my research.
Whatever the actual figures are, you have to figure that the amount reaching the needy is going to be lowered by about 33% if the government gets involved. Let's say that the Feds do run a fairly efficient bureau which chooses what charities to support and exercises good fiduciary responsibility in choosing where to pay the money. The true scenario is probably not that good but for the sake of argument, let us agree that it is. Even in that best possible case, still a significant percentage of the donation has to go to support the Federal government to pay the salaries of the people who work in that bureau. Maybe it won't be 33%, maybe 25% or 20% is closer to the truth. Even at 20%, that's 20% less to the charity than if a private person donates.
Maybe the government offsets that because they force the public to donate to charity. Maybe they take in 50% more money than would be donated voluntarily by individuals. If they did that and took 25% of the money to run their bureaus, the charities would get more, despite the governments percentage. This is certainly possible.
There is another factor at work here which I failed to mention but which is important. The individual gives to who he or she chooses but if the government collects the money from individuals the government chooses who will be the recipients of the money.
You hear these stories about the labor unions being very far to the left politically. Let's say a union has 60% Democrats and 40% Republican in its membership. The Union donates a significant portion of the union dues to their preferred political candidates who are 100% Democrats. Republican candidates are never supported by the trade unions. Therefore, 40% of the membership is having its own money spent for candidates whom that 40% want defeated. Certainly, if Republicans were in control of an Organization with a lot of Democrats as members, the reverse situation could easily occur and I would guess that it does occur in many instances, especially in the Red States.
The point is, why have a government bureau collect money from workers to give to charity? Why not just leave that function to individuals.? I give one plausible answer above. Is that why the feds want to engage in this area or are there other reasons?
Lakey
Or 15 inch battleship guns or whatever. [ love them 
