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To: supercat
Milton Friedman showed studies that as government assistance goes up, private giving goes down. The problem is that only 20% of government welfare costs actually go to the poor. The other 80%, local, state, and federal is wasted in administering the programs.

Except for a few bogus charities, like the March of Dimes, most private charities get 50% of their money to the needy. And Churches get 75-80% of their donations to the poor. This is the real reason for public-private programs. Even though it 'violates' the anti-church bias of the government, such programs are 4x to 5x more beneficial than anything the government can do directly.

17 posted on 11/11/2007 2:26:07 PM PST by DJtex
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To: DJtex
Milton Friedman showed studies that as government assistance goes up, private giving goes down. The problem is that only 20% of government welfare costs actually go to the poor.

The biggest problem with government programs isn't inefficiency. The problem is that by creating a sense of entitlement many of the programs do more harm than good. To be sure, a private charity could implement some the policies that make government welfare so harmful, but such policies are very rare with private charities and very common with government programs.

I find it amazing how many liberals want to eliminate the stigma associated with accepting welfare, rather than recognize that such stigma plays a very important function. The proper way for a person on welfare to stop being stigmatized is not to have government provide stigma-free ways of receiving welfare, but instead to get a job. Some people may have psychological difficulties in that regard, but declaring idleness to be acceptable isn't apt to solve the problem.

21 posted on 11/11/2007 2:44:40 PM PST by supercat (Sony delenda est.)
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