Economics Questions

Re: Government Welfare Overhead

jimmy — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:57:12 GMT

MacFall:

JonBostwick:

Is hard to believe that local churches and soup kitchens care more for the poor than Washington bureaucrats?

Apparently, or there's no way in hell the welfare state could have sold.

I think the state got in on the gig back in England. Some king or other started confiscating monastries and either selling off their (substantial) land holdings or offering them to prespitarian supporters of the king. The Monestaries had, previous to that point, taken care of the poor and in the wake of there having been put out of action the state decided to assume the role.

I can't remember the story exactly - Edward Rutherford describes it pretty well in London and Dublin (which are two excellent semi-historical fictional novels that give a summarized account of the histories of those two cities).

Re: Government Welfare Overhead

MacFall — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 22:54:03 GMT

JonBostwick:

Is hard to believe that local churches and soup kitchens care more for the poor than Washington bureaucrats?

Apparently, or there's no way in hell the welfare state could have sold.

Re: Government Welfare Overhead

Deist — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:03:53 GMT

One more thing to note about mutual aid societies is that they were not specific to an occupation (as unions are) or to a class (as very many middle class people made up their ranks).

Re: Government Welfare Overhead

Deist — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:59:53 GMT

Check out Mutual Aid societies or even better read "From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State" by Beito. They use to provide almost every single service that the present welfare state does but much better. They even had health insurance for all their members and their families. They covered an overwhelming amount of the lower income families in the economy. They also fought the introduction of the welfare state since they thought it would weaken civil society and destroy their reason for existing and they were very successfull in doing so until they fell apart in the Great Depression in nearly all countries.

I think it is funny how these groups that so many people belonged to are never mentioned in the history books assigned at public schools. They have been getting more and more mention from across the political spectrum however these days.

Re: Government Welfare Overhead

Jon Irenicus — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:57:02 GMT

David Kelley's A Life of One's Own mounts a powerful case against welfare, from what I recall.

-Jon

Re: Government Welfare Overhead

Stranger — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:03:34 GMT

It is much more efficient to act directly upon information than it is to exchange information (communication consumes time and energy). So, given that everyone knows the situation of people needing charity from simply encoutering them in their daily lives, they are in a much better situation of helping them directly than a government bureaucracy that concentrates information at the top would be.

Re: Government Welfare Overhead

BlackSheep — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:30:33 GMT

Private organizations have pressures that governments don't. That's why charities produce some sort of bulletin to keep the donors happy. Public organizations have no fear of their budget being cut; in fact, if they are too incompetent, they'll see it increased, because obviously the problem is not enough money. :/

My experience with public social workers has not been that good either. Maybe it's because that's what they do everyday that they start getting lazy even for very serious cases, but either way the reward system can't be very good in such a big organization as government.

We could have safety net organizations where you pay a relative percentage of your income, so they'll help you and others in case of need. Contracts could be made for a few years, and have clauses so it couldn't be broken in certain conditions, so both parts could trust each other not to rip them off.

Re: Government Welfare Overhead

Nitroadict — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:28:01 GMT

Trailing periods do not imply factual implications.

Re: Government Welfare Overhead

nirgrahamUK — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:37:37 GMT

off the top of my head. the US dep. of agriculture employes about 100,000 staff.

and there are about 850,000 workers employed in agriculture in the US.

thats a relationship of 8 to 1?

does that seem high or low..................

Re: Government Welfare Overhead

Bostwick — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:38:58 GMT

mtew:
A friend of mine has a hard time believing that government welfare programs are inefficiently run and that private programs could run things much better.

Is hard to believe that local churches and soup kitchens care more for the poor than Washington bureaucrats?

Of course, the argument that the government doesnt really care about the poor is secondary to me. Taxation is a violation of natural rights, thus should be viewed as criminal, no matter the outcome.

Everyone must be expected to only act by proper means, the state does not get to act with a seperate morality.

Government Welfare Overhead

mtew — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:24:20 GMT

A friend of mine has a hard time believing that government welfare programs are inefficiently run and that private programs could run things much better. Are there any hard facts/numbers that could back this up? Beyond the moral arguments against government welfare, are there data that confirm the superiority of the private sector? I realize that a lot of the overhead costs are hidden and thus difficult to calculate, but have there been any studies done on this? Many thanks.