http://mises.org/journals/jls/21_2/21_2_1.pdf

“[Government] income redistribution agencies are estimated to absorb about two-thirds of each dollar budgeted to them in overhead costs, and in some cases as much as three-quarters of each dollar. Using government data, Robert L. Woodson (1989, p. 63) calculated that, on average, 70 cents of each dollar budgeted for government assistance goes not to the poor, but to the members of the welfare bureaucracy and others serving the poor. Michael Tanner (1996, p. 136 n. 18) cites regional studies supporting this 70/30 split.

“In contrast, administrative and other operating costs in private charities absorb, on average, only one-third or less of each dollar donated, leaving the other two-thirds (or more) to be delivered to recipients. Charity Navigator, the newest of several private sector organizations that rate charities by various criteria and supply that information to the public on their web sites, found that, as of 2004, 70 percent of charities they rated spent at least 75 percent of their budgets on the programs and services they exist to provide, and 90 percent spent at least 65 percent. The median administrative expense among all charities in their sample was only 10.3 percent.”

One thing that is (of course) missing from these statistics that also slants to charities' advantage is the additional costs that governments spend beyond administrative costs. Locally, the food-bank accepts monetary donations and the vast majority of this money goes to buying food but (unlike the food-stamp program in the United States) this food is purchased at or near cost from large companies who want to support the food bank.

When you combine the lower administrative costs and the lower cost of food (due to corporate involvement) for every dollar spent the food bank probably feeds 2 to 4 times as many people as the government.

Something I haven't seen any studies on, which (once again) may tip the scale even further towards charities is the level of abuse in the systems. For some reason the general public tends to have no problem with people collecting benefits from the government even if they shouldn't qualify, but if someone does the same thing to a (well respected) charity. I could be wrong but I suspect the difference is the belief by many/most people that the government has nearly unlimited financial resources.

All in all, charities help people FAR more than the government does on a dollar to dollar basis

Would it be preferable that government tax dollars go directly to charities if charities are superior for administering it, or just make it all voluntary and hope people give enough?

You can't be charitable with other people's money. As I have outlayed in this thread, if taxes were lower, fewer people would require charity, and more people would have enough money to be able to give to charity - sure, some won't, but I think most people have atleast one issue where they'd be willing to donate, especially if given a large enough disposable income.

At the end of the day, we all have a responsibility to give to charity, that is my view. However, that doesn't give me the right to steal your money and give that to charity, just because you won't if I don't.

You know, nice way to completely blow over my point.  Which is "New Zealand is less progressive and spends less, yet still does a lot more with it."

Taxing the rich more and putting in capital gains taxes aren't going to help, they're going to hurt.

As for the countries with higher gini coefficents.

They're all pretty much lesser developed nations, or nations with high government involvement and high government corruption... and usually have pretty high fee's to do buisness and on capital gains if i remember correctly.

Like Brazil.  Which also has unniversal healthcare.

Besides which, look at Individual State Gini-coefficents.  It seems to have nothing to do with how liberal or conservative you are on your social saftey nets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient

It just seems to be based on "Are rich people likely to live here."

Which makes sense, when you consider "Low end" jobs are just that.  Low end.  Easy to do, and a workforce is in plentiful supply.  They're wages aren't going to change much no matter how many people are creating wealth on a high end level.

This can be somewhat shown in that the Gini coefficent briefly shrank.... during the economic crisis.  As much as "mainstreet" was hit.  The rich were hit harder.  It was just a hit they could absorb better.

If we kicked out everyone who made over a million dollars, our gini coefficent would be smaller, as would the wealth gap, but would our country be better off?

Aside from which, unlike most countries, the US calculates before government benefits, so that shouldn't effect the calculations at all which tends to inflate our score a little.

As does immigration actually.  We accept a lot more poor people via immigration then rich... and even more poor people come here illegally, and illegal immigrants are counted in census studies.  It drags down our "upward mobility" numbers somewhat too, since illegal aliens pretty much can never leave the lowest quintile.

Either would work better.

Though i still like the Idea of a negative income tax myself, with rates figured in on a regionary basis.

Extremely neat and simple.  Though granted you don't get food bank like savings that way.

Though really, the first has a few issues depending on how it's set up.

1) If congress or another part of the government decides the charities to get help, then we'd n doubt find money spent by the charities to lobby them for donations (well more so then they already do).  Essentially creating a kickback system even more direct then the vague rule change situations we have now.

2) If chosen by the people, some may create their own charities, some charity groups may go underfunded as things like Aids research is more "sexy" but less helpful sort term.

I suppose you could fix that by projecting how much money is needed in each "group" and then people can rank their choices of what they'd like to fund, and what registered charities they choose out of each category.

In connection with the direction of this thread, I would like to hear what people say is a solution to homelessness, if both funding is cut for shelters, and it is illegal to sleep in public spaces:
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=137146&page=1#

If sufficient amount of people don't donate for shelter space, then what do you do with the homeless? There was a belief that mentally ill people needed to be deinstitutionalized, so they were just let out into society, with the belief that somehow, society would find a way to deal with them. That didn't happen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation

Government's desire to reduce cost and spending on hospitalisation

As hospitalisation costs increased, both the federal and state governments were motivated to find less expensive alternatives to hospitalisation.^[1] The 1965 amendments to Social Security shifted about 50 percent of the mental health care costs from state to the federal government.^[1] This motivated the government to promote deinstitutionalization.

A number of factors led to an increase in homelessness, including macroeconomic shifts, but observers also saw a change related to deinstitutionalization.^[22][23][24] Studies from the late 1980's indicated that one-third to one-half of homeless people had severe psychiatric disorders, often co-occurring with substance abuse.^[25][26]

A process of indirect cost-shifting may have led to a form of "re-institutionalisation" through the increased use of jail detention for those with mental disorders deemed unmanageable and noncompliant.^[27][28] When laws were enacted requiring communities to take more responsibility for mental health care, needed funding often was absent, therefore resulting in jail becoming the default option,^[29] with jails long documented as cheaper than psychiatric care.^[27] In Summer 2009, author and columnist Heather Mac Donald stated in City Journal, "jails have become society's primary mental institutions, though few have the funding or expertise to carry out that role properly... at Rikers, 28 percent of the inmates require mental health services, a number that rises each year."^[30]

In short, there is no "away" you can magically suddenly make a social problem, like poverty, vanish by believing somehow the "goodness of people's hearts" if you give them more money, will end up taking care of the situation.

Ok, your main problem here is that you're mixing up different things here that you probably haven't looked into very hard...

A) Your article is about general homelessness while your wikipedia article is about chronic homelessness.  There are about 1.5 million people that are homeless. 

Of that 1.5 million

80% are no longer homeless after 3 weeks.

10% are no longer homeless after 2 months

10% are the Chronic homeless.

That first 80%, and arguably 90% aren't really that big of a deal.

B)  MANY chronic homeless outright refuse help.  That's partly why the public sleeping law is in effect.  Essentially it's used mostly to try and get homeless people to actually go to homeless shelters.

C) You completely ignored the entire main reasons for deinstitionalization provided both before and after that statement and latched on to a government cost reasoning presented someone as an afterthought... with something that started well after deinsitutionalization was on it's way and picking up 

Aside from which, if you were to believe that, it if anything disproves your central theory here.  Since afterall that would mean government intentionally shirked it's responisbilities, and gets cheap when it comes to peoples healthcare.

D) If you would of read one step further, you'd see something else that leads to a lot more dinstituionalization now then non funding.

Another notable movement, the consumer or ex-patient movement began as protests in the 1970s.^[1] Many of the participants consisted of ex-patients of mental institutions who felt the need to challenge the system's treatment of the mentally ill.^[1] Initially, this movement targeted issues surrounding involuntary commitment, use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), antipsychotic medication, and coercive psychiatry. 

As it is, unless you've comitted a crime.  You can leave a mental institution anytime you want.

The issue here is that they are cutting funding to shelters. Go back tot he issue I raised and answer that.

I did?

Like I said... 80% of people who are homless aren't by the end of 3 weeks. 

Aside from which... despite funding being cut to shelters... the percentage of homeless found in sheleters has INCREASED and the number of people unsheltered on the street has DECREASED as a percentage.

ESPIECALLY among the Chronic homeless.  Partially because the police essentially FORCE you to go to a shelter.  The Chronic homeless number dropped 10% from 2008 to 2009.

Which of course your article hasn't mentioned because well... it's an inconveinent truth.

Which is... funding isn't the issue.  It's getting people to use the beds.

On the one night check in 2009 there were 643,067 people.

Some homeless people do in fact get turned away, largely because there is no good setup right now to show the homeless where to go, and homeless shelters tend to have strict sign in and sign out policies however actual bed utilization in cities on average is only 88%... and only 82% when it comes to transitional housing.

Individuals are far less likely to be sheltered then familys... because individuals are far less likely to want to be sheltered.

For example, a number of homeless people are people who own a car or camper, and are going to be moving into a new place soon, but have to wait a few days or a week or two before their new place is ready. 

So, they sleep in their car or camper.  Afterall there is a lot of fear of disease and rape centered around homeless shelters.

Others are just those... as mentioned above, who have mental problems, and don't trust authority/have trouble complying with shelter rules.

In otherwords.  The article is largely misrepresenting the statistics for political demagoging. (it is huff post afterall)  The numbers of beds per person doesn't really matter when a great number of people don't want to use the beds.

If you want to go through the math though... on one day in Janurary there was 643,067 homeless people.  There are 643,423 year round beds in the country. (Not counting temporary overflow beds (30,000) which increases the actual number for capacity, or winter beds,(20,000) which would in janurary.)  Now i'm not naive enough to believe the beds PERFECTLY match up, however I do believe they probably match up pretty well since unusused homeless shelters are unlikely to stick around.

Really if you want to stop the homeless from living "on the street" you've got to, if anything keep the laws about sleeping in public, create some system to coordinate the homeless to get to the shelters, like say, some bus stops with a bus driver who drives people around to the right shelters... and come up with a looser system of checking in and out but not too lose to avoid letting in people while drunk or high.

and that'd cover most of it, though you'd still have issues from things like general threat of injury and sickness/shelters splitting up families.

Really though, like i said, it's really only the chronic homeless who have a serious problem... which, transitory homes work much better for them and they're the ones taking up like 60-80% of the resources.

Which is what is generally already being done.