Haven't things like the number of children born into povery increased since the implementation of the New Deal? When welfare started case workers used to go into houses of women claiming they had children without the support of a man earning money living there and would check their closets looking for men's clothes and things.

Now there is really no discouragement to women giving birth to children who can not afford to raise them. They are simply given apartments and checks. This, in my mind, encourages young women with little hope of being financially successful to have babies so they can get an apartment and get an income. I happen to work in the social services field so have direct first hand knowledge of how the system works. And as a formerly homeless person myself I have a personal emotional stake in wanting to see the disadvantaged prosper to the greatest extent they can. I am simply convinced, based on my experiences both as a homeless person and as a social worker, that the government basically throws out a life raft to people in need which is a life saver...but then does nothing beyond that. So people are stuck on that life raft for the rest of their lives.

The US has a huge amount of private debt, much spent on useless junk. There is the savings. What about those who DON'T live "week to week"? Saving rates are not exclusively among the poor . Your detachment from reality line is pretty hilarious and has nothing to do with whether savings over consumption will promote genuine economic growth.

America the Generous? Not According to the Media
By Paul Wilson | December 21, 2011 | 13:17

The media and liberals tend to portray Americans as selfish Scrooges, only interested in their own gain - why else would taxes be unpopular? But America has shown its generosity time and again, and this Christmas season, new proof of it has emerged. A report from the Charities Aid Foundation America, the World Giving Index 2011, finds that the United States is the most generous country in the world.

The World Giving Index 2011 measures generosity on three levels: giving money as a percentage of income, giving time, and helping strangers. Only the United States ranked in the top 10 nations of the world in each category. Charities Aid Foundation director Richard Harrison praised American charitable giving: "This research confirms that when we look at giving in a rounded way, including the extent to which we volunteer and help strangers, America is the most generous country in the world. America is the only country that ranks in the top ten globally on each of these three perspectives, and this first place ranking should be seen as source of real pride for people across America."

But American generosity is rarely acknowledged by the media. Instead, America is usually attacked by the media as not being generous enough, and American donations of time, money, and effort to countries are ignored or even scorned by liberal journalists.

On May 22, 2011, former New York Times economic reporter Eduardo Porter complained in a New York Times editorial that America was the "least generous" of industrial nations - by which he meant Americans were not being taxed enough to fund extensive government social programs. The networks refused to cover the extensive contributions of private faith-based charities when a tsunami devastated Japan in March 2011, and similarly ignored coverage of corporate donations when a destructive earthquake struck Haiti in Jan 2010.

This is because for the mainstream media, government social programs, fueled by taxation, are the only form of effective charity. At times, the media has even attacked private charity, because money given to private charity is not given to government programs. (This attack on private charity might be rooted in the fact that conservatives tend to be far more generous with their time and money than liberals.)

The New York Times' Stephanie Strom bizarrely blasted private charity in 2007 because it took money away from the government, declaring that "The rich are giving more to charity than ever, but people like Mr. Broad are not the only ones footing the bill for such generosity. For every three dollars they give away, the federal government typically gives up a dollar or more in tax revenue, because of the charitable tax deduction and by not collecting estate taxes."

In Nov. 2010, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein advocated giving to politically active think tanks as more effective than traditional gifts to charity.

Apparently, the "forced charity" of government social programs, fueled by higher taxes, is the only worthwhile form of charity, according to liberals. This is one explanation for the consistent media gripe that Americans are not generous, despite the mountain of evidence that suggests otherwise.

We're persuading you by offering every advanced country in the world with a social safety net as being a much better place to be poor than every third world country and every country in history w/o social safety nets. This would seem to suggest that charities never have, and never will, function as well as an organized govt social safety net.

The fact that you refuse to be convinced despite being directly presented all the evidence that you could ever possibly imagine is not our fault. Maybe take a logic class. Or history or something. I don't know what else we can offer to convince you.

Helping the Poor
In the 1960's 13% of American families were classified as poor. Since then America has spent nearly six trillion dollars to help the poor. Today 13% of American families are still classified poor. That's right -- no improvement! Government must get out of the way of poor families.

I think that the poor deserve MORE than welfare – they deserve the chance to become wealthy. History proves that only liberty – not government handouts – can give them that chance.

Seventy-five percent of our welfare dollars, enough for each family of four to receive $50,000 annually, go to middle class social workers who administer these programs. In privately administered programs, 75% goes to the needy. Anyone who advocates welfare taxes is lobbying for subsidies for the middle income social workers.

Welfare breaks up families by paying teens to get pregnant and by paying mothers to desert the father of their children. Welfare is a major force in the destruction of family values in minority households.

We have a duty to help the poor. We have a duty to get rid of minimum wage laws that prevent the poor from being trained in their first jobs. We certainly do have a duty to get rid of licensing laws that make the poor pay up to $200,000 for a taxicab license in some cities. In short we must stop supporting laws that keep the poor out of the job market.

We are the most generous nation on earth. According to a recent John Hopkins poll, 49% of Americans gave some time to help others (13% of Germans, and 19% of French gave time). Around 79% of Americans gave money to charity (44% of Germans, and 43% of French gave money). The amount that American contributed was $190 billion, or roughly one-third of the domestic discretionary budget (according to Time magazine).

If you value volunteer labor at minimum wage, private organizations today still provide twice as much help as public agencies in spite of the high taxes for social services. If people are willing to help the poor now, wouldn't they be even more likely to give more generously when they were taxed much less?

In a free economy, wages generally increase. Few workers stay at a subsistence level. Relative to the rest of the world, the U.S. has less regulation (but still far too much). That's why U.S. workers have had such high wages compared to the rest of the world. That's why 90% of our work force makes more than minimum wage, even though few law requires employers to pay more.

The handicapped would be less handicapped if we lived in a free society. Without regulation, medical advances would skyrocket, giving handicapped people new hope. Because of these advances, fewer of the handicapped would be disabled. Those still in need would receive more help than they do today, because society would be wealthier and fewer people would be poor.

The poor fare better in a free market economy because entry into the workforce is easier. Countries with less government intervention in the market are more prosperous and have the most even distribution of wealth. That's why a free market society would have so few people to help.

BTW the pursuading comment was directed specifically at that other guy as he asked me to show evidence but doesn't want to take the trouble to show any himself. I'm not playing that game where I am required to post stuff and he get's to critique it and say 'not good enough' over and over and over and over while he is exempt from posting stuff to try and convince me of anything himself.

I'm seeing stat's that show americans are more generous than those in other countries. How does that factor in with respect to your view? And stop with the insults. I have you on ignore for a reason and will stop viewing your posts unless you clean up your bs like that pronto.

While this may be somewhat true. The bottom line is people like me think that this is still a preferable system - from a stability to society POV, a humanitarian POV and a productivity POV - to letting them starve in the streets. A certain portion of society is always going to be worthless. Another portion however is going to use the stability of a social safety net to pull themselves out of poverty, and/or make a better life for their kids - much like Craig T Nelson when he was on welfare and food stamps.

I honestly think my tax dollars going to at least provide some modicum of support to the poorest members of society makes this country stronger and more stable and actually gives me a *better* chance to make money in the long run because of it.

This is the big disconnect that I think libertarians completely miss. All they see is grubby hands grabbing at their money, and they totally miss the big picture - that the more opportunity we can make for the lowest classes of society - the more we all benefit from having a stronger platform for our economy to rest on. And of course libertarians also tend to ignore all the various safety nets and govt services that helped them along in the process of making that money that they see the govt grabbing at.

Americans are the richest people on earth. It makes sense that they would be the most generous.

Holy cow ironyaments

You've shown some correlation and have jumped to causation.

Why didn't governments do any of this wonderful stuff back in the dark ages before they did it?

I am not a libertarian because of this at all. I'm a lib b/c I think that people should be able to do what they want as long as they are not hurting other people. It's has nothing to do with money for me, and in fact I'm poor anyway and used to be homelss so think I have more compassion for the poor than just about anyone. I lived it.

Suzzer, maybe if you tried living in a homeless shelter and watched the same people get SSI checks every month and even in winter the shelter literally empties out at the 1st of the month when people get their checks...and then they all come back a few days later...broke...because they spent their $800 on drugs and booze...and when offered help in securing an apt they would pay 30% of their income for but they refuse because they want to use all their money for drugs you would change your view of government actually helping the poor. This happens month after month after month. They stay in the homeless shelter and are not required to do anything to help their situation while they are collecting a check and given food and medical care and clothes and a place to live.

This is not helping in my opinion. Privately run homeless shelters require people to do drug tests and require them to look for jobs (there are exceptions for those really impaired and not really able to work at all). So they are set up to help a person get stable and then to help them improve their lot in life. The gov't run ones there is no incentive for people to do better. Give a man a fish....

Representative governments covering large landmasses are a lot harder to create than charities. A charity can spring up anywhere at any time. Or are you saying charities need representative government to flourish?

If, as Valerie Jarrett says, the government is supposed to lift people out of poverty, what’s the best way to do that? Hint: Not with handouts. Since the War on Poverty began in 1964, welfare spending has skyrocketed, but the official poverty rate has barely changed.
As I am oh-so-fond of repeating, research demonstrates a predictive relationship between earned success and happiness. Government handouts, by their very nature, can’t deliver the outcome of earned success — but, as it turns out, private charities that seek to teach self-reliance can. What’s more: They do.
Today on The Foundry, my good friend Todd Thurman spotlights the four charities that have achieved finalist status for the WORLD magazine Hope Award for Effective Compassion. Each organization — each from a different region of the country — offers job training and work opportunities to help low-income people escape poverty and achieve lasting self-reliance:
•Challenge House in Hopkinsville, Ky., connects members of the low-income community with local businesses through its Jobs for Life program.
•Bowery Mission Women’s Center in New York City offers a career counseling and job placement program for women in need.
•Victory Trade School in Springfield, Mo., certifies previously unemployed men in seven areas of food production and restaurant management in just one year, equipping them for careers in the culinary arts.
•Hope Now for Youth in Fresno, Calif., provides life skills classes and one-on-one mentoring for young men previously caught up in gangs and street violence.
The programs have seen results. Hope Now, for example, has placed 1,700 at-risk young men into first-time jobs. Victory Trade School has an 89.5 percent graduation rate and a 100 percent job placement rate. In five years, 60 women have graduated from Bowery. Folks who find a job through Challenge House’s Jobs for Life are likely to stay in them — because they receive follow-up phone calls from the ministry. The numbers might be small, but the solutions are real and lasting. With government programs, the numbers are large, but the results are often tenuous.
As Thurman explains, the government would do well to learn from the examples of private charities and at the very least not stand in the way of the worthy work they do:
WORLD Magazine’s contest provides a glimpse into the world of faith-based organizations that are successfully assisting the poor and providing an effective alternative to the welfare state. The success and effectiveness of local organizations like these should be recognized and their position in civil society protected.
Private, faith-based institutions play a profound role in alleviating poverty by addressing the relational and social breakdown—like abuse, broken families, and addiction—that so often leads to material need. By understanding the root causes of poverty and accurately assessing the actual living conditions of the poor, policymakers can begin to implement effective antipoverty policy.
Likewise, policymakers must be careful to defend the conscience rights of these groups to believe and act according to their deeply held beliefs—the same beliefs that spur them to take care of the poor in the first place—and not curb their ability to serve with unfair hiring regulations or perverse interpretations of non-discrimination laws.
The answer to poverty — or any social problem — is not to do more of what doesn’t work. It’s to do more of what does.

Maybe you should not use the people in the homeless shelter as your entire sample. Maybe you should spend some time in the house of a working poor single Mom who just had a debilitating eye infection and needs corneal transplant surgery before she can go back to work - as I have. Without medicaid she would have lost her eye. Without food stamps and section 8 - she was looking at being homeless with a 10-year-old.

I've spent time in the welfare office and I know exactly the kind of people you are talking about. Furthermore I think we can do a lot to make social safety nets more temporary and give less perverse incentives - as Clinton's welfare-to-work act (GAIN) was a good start in doing. I don't believe in lifetime dole like England. But I don't think any of these problems even come close to outweighing the benefits of social safety nets.

So what % of people receiving gov't assistance do you think fall into the working mom with a terrible temporary circumstance who stays motivated to do the best she can to get back on her feet vs. those who are riding out the system on the dole?

And I think it is important to recognize that even people who are in what are originally temporary circumstances wind up changing their views and go more towards trying to live on the dole when they encounter gov't programs and see that there are incentives to collect money and services and not incentives to get back to work or whatever?

I encountered that when I was like 19 and collected unemployment. Originally I was looking for jobs but then some guys in the line were laughing at my worrying if I was looking hard enough and documenting the places I applied for jobs. They were like "they don't CHECK" (on the places you report you applied for jobs at) and this changed my level of motivation to find a job. After that I started hanging out at the beach and was way less motivated to try and find a job.

I think that kind of thing is pervasive in gov't entitlement programs. I think that since nothing is expected of the person they are more likely to not demonstrate any type of behavior consistent with trying to help themselves and are more likely to develop an additude of entitlement. In fact I know this is the case since I work as a social worker and encounter this daily.

I think that this artical makes a great point (bolded) which seems obvious to me but had not thought of it:


Who is better at helping the poor: Charity or Bureaucracy?
By: Max Borders | 05/20/10 2:00 AM
Special to the Examiner Follow Him @maxborders
.Almost everyone, no matter what your political persuasion, wants to help poor people. When you get right down to it, the political questions usually turn not on whether to help, but how.

I came across an interesting experiment in social entrepreneurship this week - a Panera restaurants spinoff - whose "pay what you can" model may just work feeding the hungry poor.

The national bakery and restaurant chain launched a new nonprofit store here this week that has the same menu as its other 1,400 locations. But the prices are a little different — there aren't any. Customers are told to donate what they want for a meal, whether it's the full suggested price, a penny or $100.

Who knows whether this approach will be successful. It may not succeed. It may even create a lot of dependent consumers, as government programs often do. But the point is not so much whether or not this model will succeed, it is rather that it it is able to fail. Success or failure is what experimentation is all about. When the charity sector does the lion's share of helping the poor, you get more experimentation and less bureaucratic bungling. Over time, you get more of what works. And that's a good thing.
Government policies rarely fail or go away when they don't work. Most cause perverse effects. Failure can be unfortunate, but it usually signifies that a project isn't working, creates unintended consequences, or is consuming too many resources relative to the value it creates.A lot of government policies are extremely counterproductive with respect to helping poor people, despite noble intentions. Some of these policies are even designed to help the poor. Consider my top six:

1.High Taxes - Many of the resources that currently go to higher taxes would otherwise go to social entrepreneurship ventures like the one above. With higher taxes, these civil society ventures never come into existence. Of course, higher taxes also limits economic growth, as there is fewer resources available for savings, investment and growth (you know, the capital that creates jobs.)
2.Medicaid - Sometimes, people on Medicaid get caught in "low-wage traps" which gives them an incentive not to be upwardly mobile, but rather to stay marginally employed -- lest they lose their government benefits.
3."Smart Growth" and Urban Planning - By artificially controlling the number of units people can build on their property, or buying up scarce land for "greenbelts" and other subsidized public works for yuppies, you artificially inflate property values for everyone else. Such properties are certainly out of the reach of the poorest people - even renters - but are often unaffordable for the working poor who could afford them otherwise. Inclusionary zoning also counts as it sets aside for the politically connected and again raises prices for everyone else. (Economist Randall O'Toole writes (pdf) that the places in the US with the strictest smart growth policies had the worst housing bubbles.)
4.Municipal Regulations - Sometimes small entrepreneurial ventures are at the genesis of wealth creation. Regulations intended to protect the "public interest" - e.g. bans on street vendors or regs that make it raise the cost of starting up small business - make it more likely people will become more dependent on the state.
5.Minimum Wage and "Living Wage" Laws - When you raise the minimum wage, you raise the cost of a business to hiring that next employee not mention everyone who they currently employ.
6.Agricultural Subsidies - We shouldn't forget about ag subsidies, since large numbers of people living in grinding developing nation poverty are actually rural subsistence farmers or dependent on them. These rich nation policies flatten nascent agricultural sectors in the poorest nations of the world and make it difficult to enter markets as a smaller less efficient farmers.

These policies seem to be immune to the success/failure mechanisms of the philanthropic sector. But clearly these are all policies that need to be changed or scrapped. Government bureaucrats and do-gooders in the voting booth often steamroll over poor people with good intentions. And when they do, it's hard to correct the course.

The new Panera venture should be a lesson: if the government isn't crowding out the millions of experiments for affecting social change, the philanthropic sector might just do a better job helping people. But as long as government continues hogging resources for ends devised by government officials facing far different incentives than social entrepreneurs, we may never know what charity could actually achieve. Millions of experiments in social change will remain untried and untested.

Another great thing about charity is that it's entirely voluntary and feels good. If you don't redirect hand outs to Big Agribusiness or government dependency and redirected your resources to something you value more - like children's charities - men with guns would take you to jail. If you refused to pay for an ineffective charity, you'd be sending a powerful signal for that organization to change or fail.

So I leave you with a question: what if we just inverted the proportion of resources claimed by government in the name of the poor and that which goes to charity? What might America look like?

Well one big solution, as I mentioned, is making all this stuff temporary. Just like your unemployment check. When it ran out you started looking for a job, probably when it got close to running out.

Why do you think the % of people milking the system is so much higher than the people trying to honestly get off it? As a social worker your sample is always going to be skewed to the worst cases.

I agree that I see the worse cases as a social worker. I just don't think that government is capable of setting up a system that works. There is no incentive for them to do things right. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Beaurocracy has such a strong grasp and is responsible for a ton of waste. I would estimate that like 75% of the funding goes to beaurocracy and 25% goes to the poor. And since so many of the programs are entitlement programs the money that does go to the poor encourages and reinforces helplessness and dependency which compounds the problems that the people have which leaves them worse off than they were when they first entered the system.

It also encourages men to abandon their children because we are subsidizing this evolutionary strategy.

Yes.

bkholdem, I don't have time to read through all of that. I'm sorry.

Skimming what you've posted, it seems like a lot of op-ed pieces from people that support your basic premises. I see very little statistics or sources. And for the statistics you do put, for example:

Where's the source for that? Link or anything. Especially when you can go to that charities website I linked earlier and see so many charities where this isn't true. I don't consider it evidence you posting in giant blocks of text that have no links for our own verification.

I'm sure you're going to claim that I'll never be convinced.

No, it would seem to suggest people have more to give in an advanced country than in a third world country or a country with no safety net. The only thing that changes with having charities do it is that the people that want to help have to do it with their own money.

keep movin them goalposts

bkholdem,

Here are some stats on people on welfare.

http://www.heritage.org/research/rep...rty-in-america





Looks like the majority of people on welfare are single mothers.

BK your articles are disingenuous. Charities can never help people on the scale that government programs can. Sure you can pick out some success stories here and there but if charities were doing all the work there would literally be millions who fall between the cracks, as indeed there were back in the days when there were no social programs. That in fact is exactly why they were formed.

The right would like to paint a pretty picture of organizations like the Salvation Army and the churches handling all the work, because they want you to think that if the government got out of social work then the money spent on food stamps and welfare could be saved and your taxes would go down. In actual reality though they would not, and in fact would probably go UP, because as the social safety net decreases, poverty increases, and as poverty increases so do crime rates. The money now going to social safety would instead go to prisons and police forces. That's exactly what happens in other countries around the world, it would happen in the US as well. Is that the kind of society you want to live in?