I don't understand why people have so many issues with charity... you want the government to forcibly take money from the rich and give it to the poor- but when they do that organically- it's somehow worse?
Ultimately it boils down to an allocation problem. If you think that wealthy folks can better allocate surplus value into social programs than the government then you will support private donation schemes. If not, you support the "welfare state" and an expanded social safety net. This is a debate worth having, but I don't think HN is going to be a good venue for such a debate.
"forcibly take money" I assume refers to levying taxes. I think you'll find that governments that don't levy taxes generally produce less liveable societies than those that do.
The person I was responding to clarified his position on taxes. Maximizing taxation is reductio ad absurdum, whereas there are quite a few examples of countries that don't rely on tax income to maintain themselves.
> "But the Saudi government—a highly autocratic regime—has historically resisted taxing its citizens for a reason: Taxes empower people to demand more from their government, and they can often be a trigger for democratization. “Taxation plays a profound role in the rise of democracy,” Sven Steinmo, a political-science professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told me."[0]
I'm hearing an argument here that charitable giving is somehow inferior to taxation- or that amicably receiving charity is somehow less dignified than asking the government to take it for you through force. That's really what I'm responding to here...
My belief is that forcing somebody to do anything against their will is inherently immoral. Taxation is included in that. It's not that simple of course- it's all relative, and sometimes taxation can do enough good to outweigh that morality.
>My belief is that forcing somebody to do anything against their will is inherently immoral. Taxation is included in that. It's not that simple of course- it's all relative, and sometimes taxation can do enough good to outweigh that morality.
The problem with this argument is that it can be used to shutdown any government service. I can easly say, I don't have kids so I won't support schools. Or I don't like police/firefighters so I won't pay for them. I don't like parks so I won't pay. I drink water so I won't pay.
Any such society wouldn't survive. Either the next generation would simply be taken over by a competent government with an educated workforce and functioning social services. At some point you have to think beyond yourself ask what is needed to keep America alive.
I'm not sure that the person you are responding to is making a dignity argument on the topic of government assistance versus private giving. On this topic, I usually come across these arguments:
1) in an economic downturn, one would expect charitable givings to decrease due to economic contraction. I think the evidence from the 2008 recession is somewhat mixed on this topic. Most governments, not reliant on personal donations, do not face the same sort of budget issues (which is another debate).
2) Charities have the ability to discriminate. They can choose how to allocate donations in ways that can include or exclude certain segments. This is in some respects true as well for government spending, but once again boils down to the allocation problem.
3) economies of scale. Larger organizations are often less redundant than a group of smaller organizations, reducing overhead.
> My belief is that forcing somebody to do anything against their will is inherently immoral. Taxation is included in that. It's not that simple of course- it's all relative, and sometimes taxation can do enough good to outweigh that morality.
Since you are not fully opposed to taxation, would you accept a taxation scheme for a government program if an independent and well researched study showed that government spend outperformed private programs by 2.5x, 10x, etc.? Or is it more that any issue that could be addressed via private charitable organizations should be off-limits for the government?
To me, it's not just "could be addressed via charity" because most anything could be, but it's more about how essential the service is.
Basic education, housing, medical care, and food/water are areas that are so essential that having them be government run makes sense to me. I'd still prefer them to be as-local-as-practical, since I believe that accountability of government is increased the more local government is. I don't want the United Nations running my local elementary school as an extreme example.
I think that allowing for non-profit/charitable causes to exist and to have contributions to them be tax-deductible is still beneficial to society. I don't want the government deciding which churches are worthy of existing (that's problematic on multiple levels) and neither do I want to penalize someone who believes their church provides important enough community services to be worthy of support over someone else who believes that an art museum or the opera is worthy of support (whether that was via-government or via-donations).
There is no amount of government efficiency in supporting churches that would cause me to turn that over to the government.
There is no amount of private efficiency in providing for national defense that would cause me to turn the military over to private interests to run.
Tax-deductible charitable giving means that people get to decide where their money goes on their own. There's no democratic process in the appropriation of their money.
This means the wealthier you are, the more say you have in appropriating what could be government money. If you make millions per year, you can potentially apportion more money than some citizens make in a decade. You effectively have more power in the government than many other citizens who should have the same capacity for change.
> Why would my charitable giving give me power in the government?
I feel like I already outlined this, but it bears repeating. Taxation gives money to the government and the government decides how to spend it. If the government spends it poorly we can vote out those who use it improperly. You can't vote Jeff Bezos out of the country.
> Everything could be government money, my house could be a government house, my wife could be a government woman, etc.
Technically a percentage of you house is claimed by the government through property tax and your wife isn't property and I hope you know that.
I think GP was objecting to your somewhat casual "[that money] could be government money" and then drawing a link from there to "effectively have more power in the government" which isn't at all obvious to me nor the GP how charitable giving gives you that special government (monopoly on the use of force) power. It did not strike me that they lacked an understanding of the mechanics of taxation.
> means that people get to decide where their money
Yes, that's exactly what it means, because, as you say it's "their" money. A pretty fundamental part of ownership is deciding what to do with something.
You really think government should be telling people how and where to spend their money?
> You really think government should be telling people how and where to spend their money?
Nope. And you are free to spend your money how you want. The point missed here is that when it's tax-deductible that money _would_ have been local/state/federal money.
The government already decided you need to return that money back to the community/country. If they give you the power to choose who gets it, they've given you the ability to appropriate government funds.
