Libertarians in America decry taxation. What about the poor? Who will help them? Why families and charities and churches of course! Let people pitch in and help their own! People will donate their money to charities they choose and those charities will do the work and be accountable unlike “big government”.
A few pesky facts that make this solution problematic. First, most people don’t donate. Those who do, the wealthy, don’t donate to charities to do good work, but to set their own agenda and make themselves look good. So it is not about solving poverty or helping those with issues, but about charity balls. So the charities that actually do good work, they rely on government funds, aka TAX DOLLARS.
What about churches? Also tax dollars because they don’t pay any. So any work they do, is in essence your tax dollars at work because that is the taxes they don’t pay by collecting tax deductible charity. Same goes for all the people who donate to charity, it is tax deductible, which means the taxes that don’t go to the government and go to the charity. So it is in essence taxes diverted. That’s good you say, unaccountable government out of the charity business. Except no.
When a government screws up with tax dollars, there is a big inquiry and restructuring and help to those that the government didn’t help. When an organization like Red Cross screws up, there’s no accountability, a CEO stays but all the structures that created the problem reman. Worst of all, those who were supposed to be helped, aren’t helped, so government has to step in and use the tax dollars it was supposed to use for something else, use instead for something that you didn’t to use but ended up having to because the private charity stole the money and ran off. And this happens all the time! Plus that charity, uses half the money on marketing anyway just to find donors and convince them to give money and another quarter on the high paid CEO and then saves money on volunteers who are ineffective and unreliable.
So in the end, there is no accountability, the taxes are still there and misspent, and all that happened, is that you feel better about the system that doesn’t work but still screws the poor. Another case of trying to save a selfish dollar and spending 100 instead and still not solving the problem. America, you’re funny.
not-rushin 