grey_beard
The Typing Tabby
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2014
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- 1,478
- MBTI Type
- INTJ
- Enneagram
- 5w4
- Instinctual Variant
- sx/sp
Of course they are not charity, but they can be used for many of the same purposes. In places with higher taxes, there is often a broader range of services available to more people (i.e. children, elderly, disabled, poor), services otherwise paid for through charity. The 19th and early 20th century mentality was to leave these services to charitable organizations supported through voluntary donations. We see how well that worked. Yes, there were wealthy donors who set up free clinics, children's homes, soup kitchens, etc. but coverage was very uneven and did not come close to meeting needs in most places.
Funding such services through taxes provides a higher and more consistent level of funding; spreads the funding burden across a larger pool of people; and makes a given service available more consistently across the population. So, in this respect if raising taxes on the wealthy causes them to donate less to charity, it may still be the better bargain. Sooner or later, we all pay anyway; better sooner, and less.
Two issues with that.
1) Overhead
2) Scope creep and empire building.
"If you're not part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem."
Oh, and the problem of "hangers-on" -- people who really aren't in need of the service, but find their way through the bureaucracy or engage in fraud, because hey, free money.
You run into the "lawyer's uncertainty principle" -- if you define things closely enough to cut out most fraud, a lot of intended recipients fall afoul of the red tape; if you define things loosely enough
to allow even the unsophisticated among the needy to find their way in, you get a lot of fraud, waste, abuse, & hangers-on...
Not so much with private charity; particularly those which upheld and encouraged the self-respect of the recipients by requiring them to donate time & services in return for charitable donations.