Major takeaway:
"evidence has accumulated that in many circumstances, cash improves the life of poor people more than equivalent spending on aid programs or goods."
"evidence has accumulated that in many circumstances, cash improves the life of poor people more than equivalent spending on aid programs or goods."
> In 2009, when Michael Faye co-founded the New York-based nonprofit GiveDirectly, whose mission is to alleviate poverty by providing unconditional cash transfers, skeptical development experts and philanthropists told him the sums would be misspent. But in the following decade, evidence has accumulated that in many circumstances, cash improves the life of poor people more than equivalent spending on aid programs or goods.
Did you miss that the evidence from GiveDirectly's efforts isn't African-centric? They operate on a global scale, including programs that run within US borders.
> GiveDirectly is the leading global NGO specialized in delivering digital cash transfers. We’ve worked in challenging contexts across 9 countries, from Houston after Harvey to the most remote parts of Uganda, and launched 15 experimental evaluations (RCTs) with independent researchers documenting the impacts on recipients and on the local economy.
That's not to say I don't give charitably or believe in it. I just don't think that anyone has to justify not giving money to some random when asked.
I don't believe it's the government's job to hand out money to people in need. I think private charities and churches do a lot better job of spending it than a bureaucratic government, and the auditability of where the money goes is way, way more transparent so long as you're not dealing with a shady organization (which you can easily vet).
There are many "popular" charities for which auditing is as far from transparent as can be, where the majority of their spending never reaches the target audience. To the point where this is the _norm_.
Government programs, on the other hand, are required to account for every dollar spent, and issue regular public reports.
How would one go about vetting the Salvation Army's spending, for example? They say they have regular independent audits, for none of those are public. So when they say 82% of donations go to the intended target, you must simply trust them.
There are many charities that exist solely to shelter tax money and give kickbacks to the administration. My recommendation would be to avoid those.
You could also determine to give to your local church if you have evidence they're trustworthy. You could also start your own and have direct control over how the money is gifted.
Although the government does provide reports as to how money is spent, the individual has very little influence over how that money is actually spent other than via voting or running for office. Being not forced to be a victim of theft allows power to be retained by the individual and exercised with each dollar spent.
It would appear, by your metric, that no such organisations actually exist. Hence the invitation to expand on the onus you require of individuals to prevent unnecessary deaths.
The utility of government exists to cater for the citizens, regardless of who they are. Referring to the underpinning mechanism for providing such utility as theft, is strongly indicative of either a lack of working theory, or a desire for anarchism.
This is more or less my point. Taxes used for food/housing of individuals is akin to wealth redistribution. It is not money going to a public good/service but rather to individuals via an involuntary transaction. While it may benefit the party receiving the redistributed wealth, it does not necessarily benefit the giving party (though it may).
Therefore the government is not catering to all citizens. In fact, it is actively harming some.
While the Salvation Army may be considered a great charity by many, it seems to fall short on transparency so you are correct in that I would recommend focusing elsewhere for giving.
Edit: it also leads to moral hazard in a variety of ways such as corporate subsidiaries for low wage positions because they know workers will qualify for government handouts and therefore the workers demand lower wages.
Easily overcome by simply having reasonable minimum wage laws. Whereby corporations are required to provide a living wage.
> Therefore the government is not catering to all citizens. In fact, it is actively harming some.
Failing to provide support for citizens _does_ actively harm citizens. The choice you're proposing is between "maybe harm" and "we know it harms". They're not equivalent.
> I would recommend focusing elsewhere for giving.
For the third and final time - Where?
You are proposing fixing a negative externality caused by government policy with more government policy, which also happens to actively harm citizens.
Minimum wage laws add barriers to entry into the labor market for citizens. It ensures that laborers whom cannot provide utility at or in excess of the minimum wage cannot get a job in the first place.
It also actively prohibits private citizens from making voluntary, private transactions that pose no harm to third parties.
> Failing to provide support for citizens _does_ actively harm citizens. The choice you're proposing is between "maybe harm" and "we know it harms". They're not equivalent.
My point was that there was harm induced, definitively, upon Peter when you rob him to pay Paul. The only "maybe" about it was in the event that Peter wanted to give Paul the money anyway. But we know that is a specific case and not general.
> For the third and final time - Where?
I don't have a good charity to recommend. I do most of my giving through the local church and it's partner organizations. They release spending profiles, and I can see the difference my dollars make in the local ccommunity.
It appears you are correct about SA, which I didn't know https://www.businesspundit.com/10-infuriatingly-greedy-chari...
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/09/how-america...
Poverty line is a published official statement.
Percentile of world incomes, PPP adjusted, are easily found. Find and compare them.
In India the cheapest new street legal car is the Tato Nano, around $2500 (maybe small electric cars from China even less). But the cheapest new car in the US is the Chevy Spark at $13-14k.
Building codes and zoning regulations mean there’s a minimum price you have to pay for housing in the US that’s around a factor of 10 higher than in much of the world (less than $100/month for a single bedroom apartment in a city in India vs around $1000/month in the US in a city… median is currently around $1200/month). And if you can’t afford that, and try to live in a tent even with the permission of a landowner, you can be arrested because sleeping in a tent is illegal and against code. It’s illegal to be poor.
Luckily we at least have some social programs. But we make people jump through hoops to get access to them. A time tax and something that becomes a lot harder or next to impossible if you have literacy problems or aren’t good at forms.
...
> Building codes and zoning regulations mean there’s a minimum price you have to pay for housing in the US that’s around a factor of 10 higher than in much of the world (less than $100/month for a single bedroom apartment in a city in India vs around $1000/month in the US in a city… median is currently around $1200/month).
That's a pretty incredible take. Somehow so many people live in an ideological bubble, that no matter how varied the situation their explanation of the cause of the problem is exactly the same.
In the US, where the minimum wage is 10x that of India, the real value is land likely more than 10x that of India the explanation for why housing is more expensive is because of building codes. The claim is that 90% of the cost of housing is due is building codes.
I really wish people on got out of their ideological bubble more frequently. Some mantras get repeated so much people start believing they are true no matter how contradictory the evidence. It's not good for long term outcomes.
(Also, the land density per person is actually MUCH higher in India than the US, over an order of magnitude higher, which OUGHT to bid up the price of land even more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen... )
The reality is we make it illegal to be poor, whether intentional or not.
And then put meanstesting in social programs to target them, which has the perverse effect of making it harder for those who are poorest (ie least able to navigate bureaucracy) to get access to them.
And as far as ideology, both the left and the right seem to conspire to make this happen. It’s worse in cities than rural area due to obvious reasons, but within a city itself, both the mainstream left and mainstream right seem to back the regulations that make it illegal to be poor.
"Building codes" is used here in a very broad stroke. Yes, minimum wage is 10x that of India, which means the basic cost of construction labor is already 10x. If you're going to quibble the point, you make the point: 90% of the cost of construction labor is due to building codes insofar as you can't pay less than that, and that labor payment requirement exists deep into the supply chain. Insofar as minwage doesn't account for all the high cost, there are thousands of other laws edging up the price of housing. Insofar as that cumulative burden doesn't explain all the high price, there's more.
Having driven the price of housing up just thru laws directly & indirectly related to home construction (which can colloquially be referred to cumulatively as "building codes" for purposes of casual discussion), there's the psychological factor of "if I'm going to pay $X for that, I may as well pay a bit more and get more." Ergo the price bumps up further.
Having seen all that direct & indirect increase of price due to laws, we then get to the land. Again, psychology intervenes: if the price of the building itself has grown, the value of the land shifts too. One can casually assume that a house of some cost will typically be placed on land worth 1/10th that price. One is not inclined to put a $500,000 house on a $1000 property. Ergo, houses will tend to be built on land valued commensurate thereto - and housing & population growth will tend to get located on such property. There is "dirt cheap" land in the USA, but few are inclined to live there.
Further discussion would call for combing thru an itemized invoice for building a home, starting with land and labor, then similarly examining why each component is chosen vs legal requirements, and breaking each component similarly for legal and labor costs. I expect there'd be little surprise that, after analysis, US and other first-world homes cost as much as they do - given that the very starting point of labor is an obligatory 10x, and the same legal sensibilities permeate all of construction.
Consider that I could, tomorrow, buy a lot in my state for $1000 and put a new $10,000 camper on it. Instant home, owned outright. Can't do that because, broadly speaking, building codes.
If you're going to make the "bubble" accusation, please explain what's wrong with it rather than equally flippantly dissing the original assertion.
I currently live in a country where covid caused a shutdown and the government said they’d help and completely failed to do so.
We’re talking barely subsistence wages going to zero and the government promising relief but failing forcing people to beg and rely on charity.
The US social program for Covid were fucking generous.
I understand the sentiment, but I feel like this line of reasoning puts oneself into a catch-22. The first reaction would be to say "well, let's start slashing regulations". However, I suspect people who support the idea that there are regulations that "require you to be rich" would recoil at the idea of trimming things like ADA accessibility, needing GCFI outlets in homes, energy saving fixtures, mandating a certain level of green construction materials, et cetera.
In essence, the people who fear that our regulations require a certain level of wealth would not, in my mind, want to actually deregulate the market because they see the each regulation individually as being a positive thing.
"A $12,880 income in the United States has enough buying power to put you in the 84th percentile globally for per-person income" : https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/business/global...