Wilso wrote:Well, I contribute a few dollars out of every pay to a local disability trust. Have been doing so for more than 10 years. I'm going to increase it a bit since my recent pay rise. That's the difference between us. I actually give a damn about the lot of those less fortunate. All you and your ilk care about is yourselves.
I have a rather long list of charities which I contribute to. Nonetheless, charities and government programs have very little in common. Charities are 90+ percent efficient, the people involved in them either religious officials or volunteer workers. Virtually all of the money I give to charities goes directly to the intended cause. Government programs are the opposite of that. Ten or fifteen percent of anything spent ever filters down to ultimate recipients if you're lucky. It's basically the same trickle-down process which liberals are always accusing conservatives of believing in, with a vengeance.
Take the federal drug-stamp program for instance, i.e. the basic program in which "food stamps" are given to welfare recipients at the begining of the month "Mothers' Day" so that they can exchange them for cash to buy drugs with at 80 cents on the dollar. During Reagan's administration, somebody actually did a study as to what might happen if that program were replaced by a simple program in which neighborhood grocery stores would carry various food items for the poor which the poor could simply walk in, pick up, microwave and eat on the premises or take home their choice when they got hungry. Such a program would probably appeal to poor children since there would be no possibility of money intended for food for them being spent on drugs and their going hungry in consequence and such a program, it turned out, would have cost about a tenth of what the drug-stamp program did at the time.
Naturally implementing such a program was not politically possible.
Starr Parker's "Uncle Sam's Plantation" give a fairly good rundown of liberal policies for aiding the poor.
