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Comment by eropple | Hacker News Reader

> Remove that and you've got a bunch of people who basically believe in the goodness of individuals.

This is an extremely generous characterization and one that I do not feel is borne out by the vigorous "fuck you, I've got mine" platform that's dressed up as a defense of personal liberty. American conservatism had degenerated to this point before the Tea Party, but rarely was it stated so barefacedly.

The liberties of poverty--say, to die rather than impoverish your family when you get cancer, or to doom another generation to subsistence due to the factors in which they are raised--are no liberty at all. And, either through malicious advocacy or through desired inaction, the Tea Party was about that from day one. I was there. (I look rather poorly on historical hagiography, regardless of who the halo's being painted onto.)

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> The liberties of poverty--say, to die rather than impoverish your family when you get cancer, or to doom another generation to subsistence due to the factors in which they are raised--are no liberty at all.

As opposed to having the government decide for you, without actually changing the possible alternatives?

Let's have a quick review of the policies the US government has in place to "help the poor" -- starting with subsidizing mortgage interest. Not new housing construction, borrowing money so people can spend more on housing. Which therefore bids up the cost of housing for anyone who hasn't yet or never will save enough for a down payment. On top of that, it's structured so that people in higher tax brackets or who own more expensive property get more subsidy.

Since you now can't afford housing, the government will provide subsidized housing projects with no hot water but plenty of drug dealers.

You might want out of these conditions and start working a second job in order to save up a down payment for your own property. But the added income from your second job disqualifies you from the government subsidies, so running twice as fast only keeps you in the same place.

At some point a working class person starts to wonder if they wouldn't be better off if the government would stop "helping" them so much.

I hear this often, but there is actually quite a bit of evidence to refute your "fuck you, I've got mine" reference in regards to conservatives. I see it anecdotally in my own family, which is pretty evenly split ideologically.

Donated money to charity? Republicans 54%, Democrats 45% Volunteered for a cause? Republicans 33%, Democrates 24% [1]

"...households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals" [2]

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/19/giving-back-_n_3781... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html?_r=...

Take tithing to their own churches out of that, and rerun the numbers.

Why take the churches out? Because you're implying that donating to a "charity" means they're doing good for their local community. Churches seldom do much good compared to dedicated social benefit organizations.

I am no fan of church, for the record.

It would be more convincing if you backed that claim up with evidence.

http://thefederalist.com/2015/04/27/in-2013-the-clinton-foun...

I honestly have no idea of their affiliation, I can only assume this website is right-wing because of the story, but there are at least links to a W2, which seems impartial enough.

I lost faith in non-pro's a while ago because of stories like the above. The idea is sound, the reality seems shaky at best.

Of course you can pick out nonprofits that don't do much social good. High-profile ones like the Clinton foundation seem like sitting ducks for "hur hur nonprofits are no good", and lots of foundations exist to house rich people's money and not do much else.

But look around your city, look at the housing or domestic violence nonprofits, look at the ones that retrain ex-felons or offer services to help them integrate, and on and on and on.

Find churches that do a tenth of that kind of work. In my city, a medium-sized American city, I can think of a very few church-run social benefit organizations, but the city is thick with nonprofits that help the worst-off in society in a variety of ways.

FWIW, I'm actually familiar with non-pros, at least in Baltimore, MD, US. I have friends who work for non-pros, mostly because they're lawyers who need to pay the bills somehow.

More than a few have told me that the majority of their time is met filing for grants, doing "shady" book-keeping and fulfilling whatever minimum requirements needed to earn said grants. The shady book-keeping has caused more than a few to leave.

No, of course not all non-pros are that way. But, comparing church to a non-pro seems as useful as comparing the NFL to a non-pro, which until this year, the NFL was a non-profit. [0]

This was why I was curious if you had data to back up your claim. I am far from a church apologist. Very far from it, but in my N=1 anecdotal experience, the only difference between church and a non-religious non-pro, is the religion.

Not at all an attack towards you, I was hopeful you had data to back up your claim. I am still hopeful. I do not like churches.

[0] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/why-the-...

I guess I'm not sure what kind of data you're looking for.

I don't think the data set exists that says "Nonprofits are/are not tax-shelter scams that spend most of their time doing shady bookkeeping".

I don't know if there's a data set that breaks down how many people get helped by nonprofits, either, because the stuff they do takes on so many different forms (and how would you quantify the work, say, an environmental nonprofit does in terms of human benefit?).

I do know that, if you were curious, there is a very far-reaching community of nonprofit professionals online, and they'd do a much better job than me explaining the social-benefit-type of work their employers do.

I'll ask around tomorrow, too (I have a bunch of nonprofit-employed friends, who work in programs and not administration). I'll return to this thread if I get anything good to share.

(And yes, there's definitely corruption in the nonprofit world, I won't argue with that, my beef is with churches that do almost nothing for the community and still enjoy the tax-exempt status and that "we're a charity, ergo we're good for the world" sentiment.)

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