Daniel Silliman ponders on his blog whether charity could entirely replace the welfare state, as some conservatives desire:
Could private charities move beyond assistance, beyond helping at the points where the system of government assistance is breaking down, replacing government with benevolent associations as religious conservatives say would be preferable. If given the chance, could and would people of good will take care of the poor voluntarily, giving enough money to private organizations to functionally replace the social safety nets now in place?
He cites his experience as a reporter in Georgia, taking that state as a test case for whether charities could take over the work of government programs for the poor. Later he examines the claim that lower tax rates will lead to more private-sector giving:
The president of [the Acton Institute] has argued that “Private charity tends to be inversely related to growth of government welfare” and that when “budget cuts go into effect, people will reach deeper into their pockets to help those genuinely in need.”
That doesn’t seem to be true, though. Giving doesn’t correspond to tax rates, but to economic growth. When recessions hit, giving declines, and when the economy improves, giving does too. In recent history, giving increased a good bit during the late ’90s, corresponding pretty directly to the boom years of the dot-com bubble. The Bush tax cuts, by comparison, which went into effect in 2001 . . . saw no corresponding increase in giving. . . . Generally speaking, charity doesn’t increase when there’s increased need, in the way that government spending might, but rather seems to be another kind of luxury spending that people, in aggregate, spend when they have.
To state the obvious: If conservatives want the argument that charity can replace government programs to look plausible, we’ll need to start putting our money where our mouths are. You can read Silliman’s entire post here.
January 11th, 2013 | 5:51 pm
A nice piece by Silliman. If one accepts literally what St. Thomas teaches on these matters, the idea that any taxation to help the poor is ‘immoral’ (an idea that Silliman mentions) simply becomes untenable. Eleonore Stump in her book ‘Aquinas’ quotes this:
“Now according to the natural order established by divine providence, the purpose of earthly things isthe succoring of human needs. For this reason, the division and appropriation of things stemming from human justice doesn’t alter the fact that human needs must be met from things of this sort. And for that reason, the things which some people have in superabundance is owed, by natural justice, for the sustenance of the poor.” (ST IIaIIae.66.7)
And Stump goes on to say:
Two more things are worth noticing here as regards Aquinas’s economic views.
First of all, the distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor, which plays a large role in the Enlightenment and Victorian periods, doesn’t so much as rear its head in Aquinas’s remarks on almsgiving. Aquinas argues that it is a mortal sin to keep more of one’s property than is necessary to sustain one in one’s condition in life, but he says nothing about the moral characteristics persons must have in order to qualify as recipients of alms. On the contrary, the only thing he mentions in connection with the recipient of alms is the recipient’s poverty. In
explaining the conditions for almsgiving, Aquinas says that two things are necessary, one on the part of the giver and one on the part of the recipient: on the part of the giver, that he have a surplus; on the part of the recipient, that he have a need.
Similarly, in arguing that a person in extreme need can simply help himself to the
property of the person who has abundant possessions, Aquinas makes no qualifications on the basis of the way in which such a person came to be in extreme…
January 12th, 2013 | 4:00 am
I have grave doubts.
On the eve of the French Revolution, the income of the French Church was about 19 million francs, or about 144 billion Euros ($191.5 bn), at today’s value.
IIn a population of 20 million, its success in providing for the poor was very limited
January 12th, 2013 | 8:04 am
The idea presented here is silly IMO. By definition a recession is a decline in income. When incomes declines so will charitable giving, even if people maintain the portion of their income they give to charity. In order to work charities would need to develop an insurance like mechanism that would hedge the declines in donations during recessions. Might be possible but in reality the gov’t is probably more efficient here when it comes to social insurance. Charity, IMO, is more effective when it comes to more complicated social engineering.
Robert J Shiller has a good book that you may want to review, Finance and the Good Society. One idea he develops is finding policies that can work with charities to accomplish more complicated and difficult goals. For example, the UK has tried ‘Social Impact Bonds’ to reduce recidivism among those who are released from short term prison sentences. The idea is a group that works with prisoners gets the bond. The bond will pay if the recidivism rate drops 7.5%, if not it pays nothing. If the charity seems like it has a good program and it needs money, it can sell some of the bond to investors who are willing to bet on the goal being accomplished. You have an incentive for charities to find effective solutions AND you also open up the possibility for individuals to help charities thru investing (one can imagine allocating 10% of your 401K to mutual funds who buy such bonds, for example).
If the bonds are well designed, the won’t even cost the taxpayer any money. In the above example, if the bond’s payout is less than the cost of handling those 7.5% of re-offenders then the taxpayer has actually saved money.
January 12th, 2013 | 8:15 am
“If conservatives want the argument that charity can replace government programs to look plausible, we’ll need to start putting our money where our mouths are.”
Though it might be that we need to convince liberals to give as much as conservatives. Then things might work out:
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2006/12/06/who_gives_to_charity/page/full/
January 12th, 2013 | 12:10 pm
My initial reaction was that charity shouldn’t replace welfare. We do not need a class of people as continuously on charity as there is on welfare. Charity (and welfare) should help people improve their lives to the point they don’t need either.
January 12th, 2013 | 1:38 pm
Phillip,
I believe the ‘conservatives give, liberals don’t’ meme has been debunked. http://crackpotdoomscandal.blogspot.com/2012/01/those-stingy-uncharitable-liberals.html isn’t fully convincing to me but the data near the bottom raises a more important question IMO, what value is giving?
States that rank exceptionally high on ‘generosity indexes’ also seem to rank high in terms of poverty and the reverse. What is the evidence then that charitable giving is an exceptionally good program to address poverty? Compare that to an imperfect but pretty effective gov’t progrma, unemployment insurance. People get laid off in a slack economy, checks go out. People get jobs unemployment payments go down. Pretty simple and straight forward. Even has some good tools to prevent serious gaming of the system (there’s time limits, the check is usually less than what you’d make if you didn’t loose your job, you can extend your benefits by taking side jobs here and there so you’re encouraged to stay in the labor market).
Come to think of it, name me a single country or state that improved its lot with charity? Consider a state with lots of liberals who go out to eat every week versus one where conservatives give to the soup kitchen. The liberal state is making lots of jobs not only for those at the bottom of the wage ladder (dishwasher, waiter, cook) but also spurring the creation of viable businesses that can be self sustaining.
I’m not going to throw charity under the bus but it seems to have taken on a form of a modern version of indulgences where conservatives use it to pat themselves on the back and feel self-righteous (I give more than you!) or a type of money laundering (Don’t look at Romney’s low tax rate, look at his charitable donations or Senator X said he would forgo the questionable campaign contributions and give them to charity…
January 12th, 2013 | 9:37 pm
“Consider a state with lots of liberals who go out to eat every week versus one where conservatives give to the soup kitchen. The liberal state is making lots of jobs not only for those at the bottom of the wage ladder (dishwasher, waiter, cook) but also spurring the creation of viable businesses that can be self sustaining. ”
Boonton,
I’m glad you’ve taken a free market attitude there. It is comforting.
Beyond that, my comment was a bit of whimsy (much like the comment that conservatives need to give more.) I personally don’t think all needs can be met by private charity.
However, if one is to debate giving, there is plenty of evidence to debunk the debunking. I think the bulk is clear that conservatives give more. Whether the difference is as substantial as first argued is debatable. But it is clear.
But my the ultimate point is, as has not been aruged at this point, that our current system is dysfuntional, that private aid does need to supplant real needs, and that govt. is currently reaching the point of real and quite painful failure.
January 13th, 2013 | 3:55 am
And this prompts the question – what is the goal? Different goals might prompt different behaviors
Some people have the goal of demonstrating compassion. Perhaps some people regard this world as transitory and ephemeral, a test to see who is worthy of a greater reward in the next world. These people may seek out opportunities to demonstrate their selflessness and compassion, and exercise their free will to give generously.
For other people, the goal may be to alleviate suffering. These people may look for ways that have proven effective at mitigating social problems, and seek to implement them.
When evaluating which states are more “charitable,” you may consider which states have people who report more charitable giving on tax forms. Or you may consider which states have people that vote for effective programs for reducing and mitigating poverty. If your focus is on the giver, you may value one approach; if your focus is on the receiver, the other.
January 13th, 2013 | 5:19 am
St Thomas also says, ““Community of goods is ascribed to the natural law, not that the natural law dictates that all things should be possessed in common and that nothing should be possessed as one’s own: but because the division of possessions is not according to the natural law, but rather arose from human agreement which belongs to positive law, as stated above (57, 2,3). Hence the ownership of possessions is not contrary to the natural law, but an addition thereto devised by human reason.” [ST IIa IIae Q66, II,obj 1]
This implies that the legislator has a wide margin of appreciation
January 13th, 2013 | 5:53 am
I think as a general rule, NGOs do just fine at delivering services but the initial allocation of capital is best performed by government. School vouchers are the perfect example. Let Catholic schools teach but have the government supply the vouchers. Ditto health care.
January 13th, 2013 | 8:30 am
‘bulk’? As far as I can tell it’s all coming from a single book which gets repeated over and over again by the conservative echo chamber. Even taking the figure of 30% more giving at its face, if you back out giving to churches the differential disappears…(and most money given to churches is NOT for charity directly if you give credit back for the portion of church donations that do fund charitable operations I suspect the differential would still be gone).
I tend to find things everyone agrees on are often most likely to be at least a bit wrong. Institutional charity does seem to be one of those things where everyone left and right says is great. Not sure the evidence is really there. Would the world be better if people reduced their consumption by 10% of income and channeled that to formal charitable institutions? I’m not convinced.
I’m also not convinced there’s a war between gov’t and charity with liberals being on the former’s side. The bulk of gov’t social spending is on entitlements which is basically social insurance, policies that were formulated in the early 1900′s as Corporatism and later solidified under the New Deal. Even the Great Society, which was explicitly a war on poverty, basically amounts to almost nothing of the Federal budget if you back out Medicaid.
January 13th, 2013 | 2:17 pm
“As far as I can tell it’s all coming from a single book which gets repeated over and over again by the conservative echo chamber.”
Not so. This from the past year:
http://philanthropy.com/article/America-s-Generosity-Divide/133775/
“Even taking the figure of 30% more giving at its face, if you back out giving to churches the differential disappears…(and most money given to churches is NOT for charity directly if you give credit back for the portion of church donations that do fund charitable operations I suspect the differential would still be gone).”
Do you have a link for that assertion? Having dealt with the Mormon Church for a while, they actually use a lot of their contributions for charity.
January 13th, 2013 | 3:15 pm
Some people have the goal of demonstrating compassion. Perhaps some people regard this world as transitory and ephemeral, a test to see who is worthy of a greater reward in the next world. These people may seek out opportunities to demonstrate their selflessness and compassion, and exercise their free will to give generously.
This reminds me of a debate I had with a fellow over universal coverage for children….he was arguing that private charity gave people an opportunity to do the types of things you described above. I offered him a simple compromise, just tell us what portion of children should be denied health coverage in order to provide you a sufficient opportunity to demonstrate your goodness and then we can negotiate. When put in those terms he seemed to back down a bit….
If you had a world with min. poverty, suffering, unemployment etc. I would put forth there would still be plenty of opportunities for one to demonstrate compassion….to put others ahead of their own transitory pleasures. If that’s truely the goal of charity…to help one’s self rather than to help others or solve problems,I would say institutional charity can be a double edged sword by distracting people as much as helping them fulfill that goal.
January 13th, 2013 | 3:30 pm
Phillip
Do you have a link for that assertion? Having dealt with the Mormon Church for a while, they actually use a lot of their contributions for charity.
It would be tricky to do such a calculation, what one has to do is back out the funds used by a church ‘internally’ so to speak versus those used solely for others. Consider a church in a relatively well off suburb. I would say the building people go to each Sunday, the places they hold their meetings, picnics etc. all would not be charity since those giving are essentially reaping back. If that church, though, sends 5% of their collections to a sister church in the inner city that almost all of their members would never normally come within 100 miles of, that would be charity. Likewise if the church redistributes income from its donating families to needy ones inside its membership that too would be charitable IMO. I have no idea if various denominations break their spending down in enough detail to even begin to make this calculation….but we can approximate I suppose.
An interesting comparision might be to Fraternal Societies which prospered briefly at the end of the 1800′s and start of the 1900′s who fought neck and neck with the growing life insurance industry. In such societies members pledged to pay familes whenever one of their members died with the monthly giving totally contigent upon the needs of the community. Some did expand beyond simply helping the bereaved and covering families that suffered injuries, sickness, even unemployment.
In regards to the Mormon Church, you are aware that the less than 2% of Americans are Mormon and while there are some overseas Mormons they are even smaller in other nations that have conservatve political parties (Canada, UK, Europe etc.).
January 13th, 2013 | 3:43 pm
In fact, the story of Fraternal Societies almost exactly mirrors the plea made here. They appealed to people’s charitable side, argued that the community should help those upwards. They weren’t overtly religious but often had the religious ‘tinge’ that lodge type groups often embrace (i.e. rituals, esoteric ‘teachings’ etc.). They failed for the same reason charity is failing in Georgia. When a lot of bad stuff happens at once, such a typhoid epidemic, there were too many members in need and the cost for other members to cover them was too high. Since they rejected the profit making model of the insurance industry, they did not build up reserve funds and other acturial tools that might have otherwise helped them thru. And since they were so deadset on being non-insurance companies they made it clear there was no contractual obligations on members to cover shortfalls that could be enforced by the courts (who weren’t too keen on them to begin with as they were in conflict with the growing insurance industry)
January 13th, 2013 | 9:01 pm
“It would be tricky to do such a calculation…”
Thus no documentable proof.
“In regards to the Mormon Church, you are aware that the less than 2% of Americans are Mormon…”
But the argument applies to religious groups in general. Really, do we have to think that contributions to religious groups are somehow different than to secualr ends, Even more generally, it makes not difference whether one donates to secular or religious groups – it is the measure of charitable giving. And that is not disputable.
January 14th, 2013 | 6:35 am
Since you insist I’ll try to get at some documentation. You cited the Mormon Church as being exceptionally charitable, so whatever they are doing is probably at the high end of the spectrum according to you. Well please review http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/12/insight-mormon-church-mad_n_1769539.html
The LDS Church takes in about $7B per year, only from Canada alone, and has amassed at least $35B worth of temples and meeting houses. In addition “controls farms, ranches, shopping malls and other commercial ventures worth many billions more.”
Yet the church has no notable hospitals or major charity ventures relative to what one would get if it was tossing even only two or three billion per year to pure charity. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is often seen as a modern counterpart to the charities created by the 19th century ‘robber barons’, distributes only about $1.5B per year.
Really, do we have to think that contributions to religious groups are somehow different than to secualr ends,
No but I think a donation to a group whose activities you partially consume is different than one you don’t. Giving to your al mater where you hope your kids will someday attend and whose reputation you benefit from is not the same as a pure charity donation. If you want a secular example, giving to your kids little league team is likewise not a pure charity either….even giving to the HS football team whose games you attend isn’t the same. If you insist on a liberal example then giving to NPR which you listen to all the time is also likewise at least partially ‘self-consumption’.
I suspect if you did adjust church giving downwards to factor out the ‘self-consumption’ factor you might be surprised to find the Mormon’s come out worse than Catholics and other denominations.
January 14th, 2013 | 9:14 am
“Yet the church has no notable hospitals or major charity ventures relative to what one would get if it was tossing even only two or three billion per year to pure charity.”
First, thanks for accepting the data that conservatives are more likely to contribute to charity than others.
Second, I use the Mormoms as an example. One which I have direct experience. For example, when Hurricane Isaac hit my area, those Mormon missionaries that are supported by that money that supposedly does nothing but build churches and buy ranches were among the first helping those flooded rebuild. From experience, they are also using that money to support their fellow members who are unemployed or ill. And I have seen those Mormons pay the hospital bills of fellow members (perhaps part of the reason why they don’t build hospitals.) That’s a fact though it is not part of a Huffpost piece from the election season.
January 14th, 2013 | 9:31 am
“No but I think a donation to a group whose activities you partially consume is different than one you don’t.”
But that I would argue is part of the problem. One does not “consume” religious services. First, at least for believers, it is a duty to support those that are providing what is a basic human need – a link with the Divine. This link, even if it does not directly alleviate a material need, meets a fundamental human need as real as physical needs. In fact, as Christ teaches us, we do not live by bread alone.
This is part of the problem that I alluded to in my first comment. Human need does in fact transcend the material. In fact, John Paul II noted, the greatest poverty of the First World is not material, but spiritual poverty. To that end, contributing to religious organizations, far from being a service “consumed” and which should be exempted from our calculations regarding charitable giving, actually is of first importance. We should consider it a “first thing.”
January 14th, 2013 | 9:59 am
First, didn’t accept the data. As I pointed out it has problems, one we didn’t touch upon was the failure to account for disposable income versus total income. One we did was to remove the element of ‘self-consumption’. A man who goes bowling every Sat. night dropping $30 each time versus a woman who attends services every Sunday morning dropping $30 in the basket. One here is counted as giving $30 to charity and the other is counted as giving nothing…yet the fact is the woman is in some sense paying for her own activity each Sunday. I suppose some types of services can make this more explicit, requiring people to buy tickets to attend services and *then* pass around a plate to get donations for charitable works. I suppose this may happen when you have some celebrity preachers but normally the distinction is left blurry for obvious reasons.
In fact one could push the issue and note that the owner of the boweling ally gives a large portion of his income to feed children overseas as well as providing jobs to ex-cons, the mentally disabled and others in a purposeful effort to do good while the Church only gives a tiny portion of its income to a far away institutional type of overseas charity and puts most of the rest of the donations right into building and property ‘bling’.
And I have seen those Mormons pay the hospital bills of fellow members
We are also missing from the data non-institutional acts of charity. If you give your sister-in-law $100 to get her electric turned back on, let a friend whose down on his luck live with you rent free for a period of time, or even just give the person in front of you a dollar to help her complete her purchase you’re acting charitable yet this giving is rarely quantified and tabulated.
January 14th, 2013 | 10:35 am
“We are also missing from the data non-institutional acts of charity.”
Sure, but this is part of the problem of doing social science. We are left with data which may have some problems. But until better data comes up, we are left with what we have. And that is that conservatives give more. That is, unless one wants to change the definition and deny religious contributions. But as I argued above, this makes no sense – especially from a Christian perspective.
January 14th, 2013 | 11:52 am
The description of church charity that I am reading here is unfamiliar, as if it is based on some of the funds taken in the Sunday collection basket. Most church charity involves actions—teaching language and citizenship classes, driving people to doctor appointments, preparing and delivering meals to the elderly and poor, etc. Some volunteers pay for supplies out of their own pockets. People serve as advocates, they research social justice issues, they raise funds. They find affordable housing. In other words, they give their time and expertise. These things don’t show up in the parish financial statements and pie charts. parishes don’t just ask Father to send some money from the collection basket to the homeless shelter.
Here is a link to a parish that has wide-ranging charity involvement. It gives an idea of what Christian charity really looks like, rather than some atheist’s notion of it. My local community would be in a world of hurt if Christian charities pulled out. Before they set up the local homeless shelters and food pantries and housing services here, there was nothing for the poor.
http://www.gs-cc.org/ministries-socialjustice.php
January 14th, 2013 | 1:37 pm
peg,
You’re right but then that volunteering doesn’t show up for non-church charity either. In trying to figure out ‘who gives more’ we are stuck with comparing dollar to dollars. Someone who spends 5 hours a week helping tutor people for free won’t be counted whether they do it in a liberal or conservative church or a secular group of some type.
Keep in mind, though, that Phillip assertion was that ‘things might work out’ if liberals gave as much as conservatives. Leaving aside the debate over whether or not conservatives ‘out-give’, the fact seems to be that regions of the country that score higher on giving doesn’t seem to do much better on ‘things working out’.
That’s why I ask you to consider the hypothetical of ‘Liberal State’ deciding to eat out 10% less and give that money to charities. I’m not doubting that the charities who cash the checks will be able to point to helpful things they are doing. I do doubt that the overall effect will be good. The people harmed by such a policy (laid off busboys and waitresses, for example) are going to be hard to quantify but they would be very real.
One way to address the issue would be to make charitable giving more productive. That can be done by thinking honestly about how much of a charitable dollar is really hiding consumption (which isn’t a bad thing, there’s nothing wrong with going to a nice looking Church every Sunday and if you use it you should contribute to it) versus absolute charity. It can also be done with creative policies like Social Impact Bonds which can use the profit motive to amplify the charity motive’s effects.
January 14th, 2013 | 9:06 pm
“Keep in mind, though, that Phillip assertion was that ‘things might work out’ if liberals gave as much as conservatives.”
Actually, as I noted early in this string, it was mainly a comment on the comment that conservatives “need to put their money where our mouths are” in the original post. That is, the evidence shows (and it does) that conservatives do put their money where their mouths are.
I also noted that I doubted private charity could meet all needs. I’ve also noted that much could be met by charity – a selfless giving – regardless of whether it is to Churches or not. In fact, the giving to religious institutions, even if not directed towards material needs, meets the higher, and ultimately truer needs of the person.
I agree with your free market solution that liberals may be taking, that is, given the pursuit of their needs in dining out etc., they may stimulate the economy. In fact, as it is shown that there is more charitable giving and more dining out where taxes are lower. Thus, the giving of the conservative and the dining out of the liberal may help others more fully with the roll back of large government.
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