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from the suppresion-of-the-proletariat dept.
Analysis of a study (PDF) carried by UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education shows that isn't the poor people won't work but the work they do can't sustain them. As a blog on WaPo puts it:
We often make assumptions about people on public assistance, about the woman in the checkout line with an EBT card, or the family who lives in public housing. [...] We assume, at our most skeptical, that poor people need help above all because they haven't tried to help themselves — they haven't bothered to find work.
The reality, though, is that a tremendous share of people who rely on government programs designed for the poor in fact work — they just don't make enough at it to cover their basic living expenses. According to the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, 73 percent of people who benefit from major public assistance programs in the U.S. live in a working family where at least one adult earns the household some money.
This picture casts the culprit in a different light: Taxpayers are spending a lot of money subsidizing not people who won't work, but industries that don't pay their workers a living wage. Through these four programs alone [food stamps, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, income supports through welfare], federal and state governments spend about $150 billion a year aiding working families, according to the analysis (the authors define people who are working here as those who worked at least 10 hours a week, at least half the year).
The workers relying the most on social programs: Fast Food (52%), Home Care (48%), Child Care (46%) and Part-time college students (25%).
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Thursday April 16 2015, @01:22AM
Part of the reason private charity doesn't seem to scale in the USA is because the governments within the USA have been unlawfully taking on the role as a dispenser of charity. If one of the local homeless shelters you chose to send funds to has turned into a crack house, you have the option to stop giving them your funds. This is NOT the general case with government charity, as the monies used have been obtained with taxation/theft, and if you try to stop funding the government anyway, conventional wisdom dictates that you are courting personal disaster.
Tally up the total you (presumably as a productive, relatively self-supporting individual) pay in taxes and government-imposed fees. The easily visible taxes should total 50% or more of your gross compensation. That alone should indicate that, absent such harsh demands on your productive capacity, private charity should indeed be a viable solution, as it was indeed for much of human history.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday April 17 2015, @04:57AM
Your idea was tried in early 19th century Britain and it didn't workout too well for the poor, read your Dickens. Your biggest error is thinking that without taxes you'd be 50% richer when in reality most wages would drop by close to 50% and the various fees that would be needed to be paid would sky rocket as they would be paid to private enterprises who are only interested in increasing profits.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Saturday April 18 2015, @03:27AM
Remind me: which Dickens titles involved a governmental system that treated humans like self-owning individuals rather than little better than chattel property?
Your criticism of the potentially inefficient or insufficient ways free individuals might choose to treat private charities is the functional equivalent of saying that American slaves were better off in forced bondage, 'cause they'd be unable to take care of themselves otherwise.
The potential downsides of freedom do not matter - neither you nor the US government has lawful authority to resort to any flavor of slavery.