Reducing govt. spending by giving tax money to charities!!

Please read my post.

I'm not saying that market forces will take over because there is profit to be made in welfare.

I'm saying that if we introduce a system where people can give a portion of their tax money to charities and make the charities spending and success records publically available...

Then the most successful charities, the ones that achieve the most with the least amount of money, will be the charities that will recieve a bulk of these contributions.

As a result only the strong successful charities that work will prosper and thrive.

This is market forces, in every sense of the word.

And it will lead to poverty relief programs that are a lot more efficent and practical than what the government implements since it has little oversight and funding is rarely tied to proven success.

Cannot buy that at all - sorry. what % of the 250mil is familys, low income, and unemployed. What is Average in america?
If you have a average family of 4 that's $2,000 - what is the poverty level and what percent of people earn less that 30k a year and you want to have them give what% back??

The problem is that the country's needy will be dependent on their goodwill with nothing concrete in place to make sure their needs are met.

That is why Church and other volunteer organizations have never really sucessfully worked to meet the needs of all those who need it in this country.

What if other government needs were met on a voluntary basis? I would hate to see the shape of our country if people had a choice to either keep all their money or give some up even for something as needful as say, the local police department.

It is the same with charity. I know that people say that they don't like being forced to pay chairty by way of taxes, but someday those tax dollars will help you or someone you love and you would appreciate it. It sometimes means the difference between living in dirty and unhealthy conditions or having a roof over their heads with running water and electricty and being able to at least go to the doctor. They may not get to go to the best doctor but any doctor is better than no health care at all.

Do we really want our country to neglect the needy and the poor?

I don't understand why this is so difficult to understaand.

When did I ever say that under this plan, people either get to give a portion of their taxes to charity or keep it for themselves. What even makes people think thats what I'm saying.

I'm saying that for a percentage of taxes you pay to the government, you should be able to choose to instead give it to a charity that meets the requirements i established to make sure it's fair and only goes to the charities that are proven successful.

If you don't give it to charity, it goes to the government. You don't have the option of just keeping it.

And when did I say that the government should stop providing welfare and meeting the needs of the poor. All I said was that if this plan works and people give money to charity and this alleviates poverty, the government can afford to spend less on alleviating poverty.

People, please PLEASE take the time to read what I'm actually advocating before you criticize me for saying something that I never said. It's alarming how many people are voting against this idea without having any idea what they're actually voting against.

It seems that I did misunderstand you.

What is the need in having another institution? Why reinvent the wheel? Why not just improve the institution that is already in place? If people got to give money up for charity to either one then there is no reason to have other institutions to do the same thing with tax money.

I distrust the idea and think it would be a way to phase out welfare and make the country's needy dependent on private institutions with their own way of doing things. It would take out money that is needed for welfare programs to be more successful. Then people would say, "look, the private charities are doing more good than the government's welfare system..." and that is how it would slowly take over the government welfare system. Then the country's poor would be dependent on private institutions that could either pick and choose who they want to help depending on what their agenda is; or there wouldn't be enough volunteer organizations to meet the needs of the poor and disabled and the elderly; or there could be conditions to be met in exchange for help.

That is why it is better to just have a non personal institution that is one uniform with one system already in place. If things need improving, then we should improve what we already got instead adding more that would just cost more money setting up all the beuacracy that it would involve.

If people want to donate to private institutions I think that is admirable and I would encourage it but I don't think that the welfare system ought to be slowly privatized.

History has shown repeatedly that various competing institutions with different approaches, different rules etc. competing with each other to do something as efficently as possible achieve a lot more good than one massive institution attempting the same.

This is why I'm proposong what I am.

If there are various charities out there using different approaches, competing with each other to do as much good as possible. If the charities that are most successful in doing the most good with the least money are rewarded with news coverage of them and thus increased donations to them (through the tax reform I propose), then a lot more good can be achieved. We'll quickly zero in on what works and what doesn't. Inefficencies will be eliminated, and slowly so will poverty.