What do you think about revoking the social benefits of drug users?

[mrstickball]

Soleron said:

Chairman-Mao said:
I am very conservative so I basically think there should be no social programs at all (everything should be privatized) so I would definitely support this idea. Why should my tax money go towards health care for some fucked up addict? Its supposed to go to honest hardworking people as well as infrastructure and other programs.

The below is not referring to drug users or those able to work and choose not to.

Taking care of the lower-earning or unable-to-work sections of the population directly benefits you. Not paying for them to have a house, food and utilities out of tax means a greater cost when they recieve emergency medical care, or commit crime and take police/justice time and are kept in prison, or because they aren't educated enough to contribute to the economy, or because their children don't have the opportunity to rise out of their parents' social situation.

This assumes that:

1. The people receiving this benefit actually could not take care of themselves without the benefit (which is not always the case. I know this for a fact as I am a landlord that has had tenants on government assistance that did NOT need it)
2. You assume very restricted social/economic mobility. This is also false. There is a large amount of mobility between generations. For example, my parents are below the poverty level as I type this. I grew up in that situation, and I am not below the poverty level.
   
3. The government is the only solution. Not the case.
   

Private charity is erratic: it can be removed at any moment with no commitment to people or guaranteeing that a particular service will continue long enough to matter. The money given to charity can rise and fall: charities earn the least money during recessions, but that is when the necessary volume of provision should rise! Charity is also free to discriminate between the ethnicites, geographic areas and kinds of need they provide for. People who work for charities have little incentive to get people back to work because their existence depends on poor people needing help - but if the government provides then they have huge incentive to get people into work as it gets tax dollars and reduces expenditure.

Then lets work to find solutions that ensure charities are incentivized more - higher tax deductions for people that give, and more social grants by the government. Lets have charities be the driving force of welfare instead of the government. They do a far better job. You can argue that charities can discriminate, but the fact is that if a charity does that, it means that another charity can easily come along and address the needs of those that are not being met. I find it hilarious that you say that charities have no real drive to get people back to work - its been proven time and time again that charities are far more efficient vehicles to get people back to work than government, and shame on you for saying otherwise. Your post is full of ignorance.

Ending government social programs is a short-sighted view, as next tax year you would be a few thousand dollars better off, and then in all subsequent years the costs I mentioned would eliminate almost all of that gain and yet the average level of provision would decrease as giving to charity would be a choice a minority would make (instead of everyone paying) and they wouldn't exactly give more than they would have in tax.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. How many charities do you know of that exclusively take care of minorities? I can think of many. The NAACP comes to mind as a prominent vehicle to serve minorities exclusively. Just because charities work differently does not mean that they don't perform worse than the government. Charities exist on 2% of America's GDP. Government welfare programs exist on a larger amount, and aren't enabling more benefits.

 

And let me ask you this: Why is it that since we started the war on poverty, the unemployment and rates of poverty are exactly the same, despite the trillions poured into social programs? You say charities have no incentive to rehabilitate the people, but the absolute fact is that the government has done no better, and I'd love to see you provide a reference that can prove otherwise.

And here are some examples of charities which are helping people, and having great success rates on rehabilitation - to the likes of which the government has never seen:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teen_Challenge#Studies_of_Teen_Challenge_Effectiveness (higher than average success rates for getting youth off of drugs, and into employment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvation_army#Disaster_relief - Salvation Army usually arrives FIRST, BEFORE GOVERNMENT AID to disaster sites.

And so on. I wonder, Soleron, have you ever worked for a charity before? I would think that if you worked with one, you'd probably change your tune. If you haven't worked for a charity, then I don't know how you can really comment about the need of government welfare programs, when you haven't seen people band together, and help out eachother.

I've worked with charities for almost a decade now. I can honestly tell you, and every other VGC-er that your view on charity is BS. I haven't met a director that hasn't wanted to help rehab people, get them to work, deliver aid to them unbiased, and use every resource they have for the less fortunate.

 

As I've done before, I'll give my personal example:

I live in a town of ~13,000 people. My church started a local food pantry. They started it to help those below the poverty line to have food assistance (among the other soup kitchens out there).
The program was run by a woman that lived below the poverty line her entire life, and was retired - she wanted to give back for all the assistence she had recieved in her life.

The program's budget was under $500 a month. The money was provided by the members of the church, and any external donations. Overhead was covered by the church, as it used a converted basement-turned-pantry during the week. Church members, and whomever was willing (about 50% of staff was external) staffed the project. Food was obtained via the Mid-Ohio food bank.

For that $500, the food pantry could feed an estimated 1,000 families a month which is approximately 4,000 people. Comparatively, the government agency was feeding far less people for far more money...From my understanding, they were spending about 20 times more money to feed less people. Of course, the reason for this is that the government agency needed to pay staff, pay overhead, and pay market prices for the foodstuffs. A charity didn't have those disadvantages. And its for those reasons that I believe private charity will always trump the government.