Financial Assistance for the Poor Should Be the Responsibility of Charities, Not Government

In liberal democracies, the govt’s role is to enable the citizens’ rights. It ensures everyone can exercise basic rights & freedoms by taking care of education, health, security, etc. and operating the relevant services such as police, public health & school systems.
Governments must ensure the basic services, but not give money.

If the money enables any needed right, the gov should establish a service for it. Throwing money at the problem can’t ensure that the money will be used to solve it, or that it will be used well. When it comes to giving money, as opposed to services, this is what happens. Gov gives people money without enough supervision and follow up. And so, because it can’t address the minute details, the problems are perpetuated, not solved.

If not, then what the gov is doing is simply taking money as taxes from everyone, and giving it away to others. The gov should only take money in order to provide needed services – otherwise it should leave it to every person’s decision how to spend their money. It is unfair to harm one person by taking what he worked for, in order to better another’s, who hasn’t worked to earn it, or might misuse it. If the money doesn’t serve a critical need, then one usage of it isn’t better than the other – in both cases, the money goes towards non-essential needs[[http://tinyurl.com/66cbsdv]]

It’s the gov’s duty to enable the objective conditions needed to live in a humane manner through services which verify that the needed conditions are met. Subjective conditions are set by society, and so it is society duty’s to enable them. Money, which is free to use by the owner’s discretion, enables those subjective conditions, and so should be given to the poor by the society, since society has decided on the need and will be able to spread it better.

Bottom line, as long as the citizens’ basic rights are enabled, then any additional financial expenditure should be done by society, who’ll do it better.

Due to rising in poverty’s reliance on the government [[http://tinyurl.com/25kjt4f]] we need to give those capable of working an incentive to become self sufficient & to contribute to the economy. Currently, gov. aid is hampering this effort.

Gov’s financial aid is legitimizing the request for aid, at the expense of working & contributing individuals because once something is a govt service, people feel that everyone is entitled to it. So why work when I am entitled to an income for doing nothing? Unwed mothers have another child so as to get enough income-support to stay home.

Even if the amount of money received is lesser, it’s still received for no work, and the extra time is worth losing some money on it.

However, charities don’t just throw money at the person. They initiate solutions, e.g education, training [[http://tinyurl.com/5vprv7d]] etc.

The reasons that Gov financial aid is harming people’s ability to return to work:

1. Once labeled as one who can’t be self sufficient, one’s psychological belief of low self worth is reinforced by the government paying them to stay at home and out of the workforce. The dependence on the government grants become a crutch to lean on, causing one to doubt their abilities.

2. Especially since they have the stigma of “mooching from the public”, or being labeled on the same level as other beneficiaries of public support, such as the disabled or the elderly. This makes them resentful towards the public, and vice-versa.

3. The money is conveniently easy to come by, and it seems that working more for slightly more money isn’t worth it, when anyone who can work for money should, even if it is less convenient.

With the end of gov aid more and more people will go to work – since they won’t receive from discerning charities, and would still want to maintain their lifestyle, leaving the cycle of poverty, and leaving only those who can’t work for charities to assist efficiently.

Government financial assistance to the poor is operating under a cumbersome and generalized set of criteria, designed to encompass the “average” welfare case. This kind of system can’t cater to an individuals’ situation, as explained in our 4th point.

The payment itself, such as unemployment benefits, causes critical harms to the poor, (point 2), but also many taxpayers resent their misused involuntary contributions, and feel that since the state is taking care of the poor, they shouldn’t [[http://tinyurl.com/6fe9n53]] This means poor people actually get less money than what they could have, due to relative inefficiency:

A very large cut of the tax money is lost on its way to the poor, due to red tape, regulations and administrative process required before it gets to the beneficiaries. Official US data shows that on average, 30% of the budget to assist the poor, actually end up at the poor’s pocket, with the rest getting lost in the welfare bureaucracy and mechanism. [[http://tinyurl.com/damfof]] This is in striking contrast to charities, who are able to distribute 65%-75% of their budget to the poor, if not more. [[http://tinyurl.com/5wz8txf]]

In addition, as a govt service, it’s affected by politics – the minister in charge considers only the poor, but also the lobbyists, coalition pressure, and the next elections which strongly affect who receives the money – specific pressure groups, not the most needy. Such election pressure also leads to fear of failure, which means not trying innovative solutions, because they might not have clear successful results – so instead of solutions, the govt is just making the situation more comfortable – which point 4 shows is actually harmful.

Overall, when it comes to the allocation of money, there is no comparison between the direct charity mechanism, free of conflicts of interests, and the government mechanism, which is inefficient and harms those it should benefit, namely the poor.

Private charities better tackle poverty for many reasons. Across the board they do the job best, build to supervise and follow up, and have the fewest middle men between the money and the recipient, especially when compared to the gov[[ http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4827%5D%5D

1. Charities are focused. Each charity is aimed at a specific problem, and chooses the tools & personnel most suited to solve it. None of the govt’s overhead means more efficiency. Charities aren’t burdened by needless rules, that apply only in governmental projects. They can hire and fire with no constrains, with much of the staff actually volunteering.

3. Charities have to be efficient. If they don’t show results, or if the donors feel that their money is misused, they’ll lose donors, just as if volunteers feel that their efforts are wasted, they’ll leave for a better charity. Also, by law they are more transparent then byzantine govt programs, and must be so to keep the donors happy, and acquire new ones.

4. Many Charities work directly with and in the community – charities can better understand what each community needs, and how to best supply it.

5. Agenda – A critical point is that charities don’t have conflicts of interests with other “more important” causes. They’re specific and goal-oriented.

All of these things lead to three very important results:

a. Only the truly needy receive charity. The less regulations & overhead there is, the more effort can be made towards finding the people who need help, and the specific ways to help them.

b. The charity they receive is what they need – poor students get grants, and the disabled get cheap wheelchairs but no-one gets just money thrown at their problems.

c. They can give aid in many forms – even finding jobs & preparing people for them. They have experts at their fingertips to see how those they are helping are improving, and to actually follow up and help throughout the whole process.

Both sides agree poverty is a societal problem, but Opp claims gov is responsible for everything that happens in society, and should go about fixing it all. We don’t agree, and view the gov as a machinery designed to protect the citizens’ basic rights.

Social change and social responsibility don’t fall in the realms of this faceless machine. If we try to force it to deal with social change, and communist societies are an extreme example – we see their failure to progress with time. And indeed applied to this debate, we’ve already seen that gov’s consistently fail at dealing with poverty[[http://is.gd/zHHpqx]]

Two reasons for that:
1. gov inherent slowness, to which Opp conceded – the more we rely on bureaucratic gov to affect and direct society instead of flexible societal organizations, the more we slow social progress.
Being a bureaucratic machine, gov actions are always backed with tons of paperwork and several departments taking care of a single approval, making any process slow and cumbersome. Charities are constantly scrutinized by the public. Without constant proof of their achievements, charities stop getting funds and volunteers. This makes them quick and precise in their actions and goals.

2. public complacence: if gov tries to take care of a problem, then the public will do less (“someone else is doing it for me”) until the situation turns critical – and we’d prefer public involvement before a catastrophe.

Poverty is on the rise, so we see this motion as a message to society, that it cannot rely on the gov to fix it with money. The problem is rooted too deep in the social fabric for crude gov machinery methods, and needs to be addressed at the core: the public, being the driver and operator of charities.

It is exactly charities, which are the manifestation of social drive and responsibility, that will bring real change, provided we don’t continue with gov intervention, as we show in our last point.

Let’s examine the world free of direct financial aid to the poor by the gov: we already described the resentment of working citizens who see their hard earned tax money, being wasted inefficiently on welfare.

If we divide the taxpayers population into 3 types, it is evident that all types will actually contribute more than what they currently contribute via taxes:
1. The kind, good natured: will continue to donate and volunteer. Now they’ll be free to donate more due to increased tax breaks, and goodwill can fully raise its head. Moreover, people won’t feel like suckers doing the gov’s job, but like the important social builders they are.
2. Those who don’t care: now have a strong motivation to contribute, since our mechanism assumes tax breaks and other incentives. If the money goes either way, then at least they’ll get a good feeling from the act of donating.
3. The unkind or stingy: will have the same strong motivation to contribute, plus if they can give the money to the state and feel forced, or give to a charity which they like and feel better without losing any money, then their choice is obvious.

Now add that to the fact that every country has a large network of countless charities, for every conceivable cause, who are eager to reach out and help the poor and needy. In the UK alone there are around 170,000 charities[[http://is.gd/0iNXvo]] and in the US more than 1.1 million[[http://is.gd/gbu5TB]]

Many poor people don’t get to enjoy the kind of effective aid that these charities provide, because charities naturally seek the ones in most need. Therefore they would not be inclined to help those who already receive aid from the gov. With increased resources, society’s understanding of charities necessity and support,we’re freeing the charities’ hands to fully help those who need.

Those who are in most need, and no longer receive an ineffective generalized aid from the gov, can enjoy the focused, personal and effective aid from charities.

Obviously, it’s imperative that society work toward breaking the ruthless cycle of poverty. Two questions remain: what is gov’s mandate to its poor citizens, and what’s the most effective way to break this cycle?

Prop has shown that gov is not impelled to give financial aid, rather to protect citizens’ rights. Furthermore, we showed that charities provide the best tailored solution to individuals’ problems, but hindered by aid from the faceless indiscriminate gov.

GOV MANDATE:
We’ve shown why govs should stick to ensuring basic rights (health care, education, safety, freedom). These rights are provided and protected WITHOUT financial aid, but rather through other existing systems. Opp vaguely argued that the poor need more rights than these however failed to mention what these are or how they are addressed by receiving gov cash.

Opp gave a generic “gov should fix society” argument, exemplifying a view of society in which gov dictates imposing, top-down policies. We’ve shown that govs should allow society to improve itself, especially as society does so better.

Indeed, Opp’s examples in this debate were in fact paradigms of govs enabling pre-existing social change. Thus, they support OUR claim that govs should simply facilitate socially driven change, taking care not to hinder it – in this case by ceasing its harmful “aid” machine & giving more tax breaks towards charities. Govs should support charities, not supersede them.

EFFECTIVENESS:
There are soup kitchens for the hungry and shelters for the homeless, but beyond these simple needs, each poor person is different. Some need money, some education, and some just the incentive to find work. This is no job for bureaucracy.

Gov is bound to operate by a set of generalized criteria that can be followed by every gov bureaucrat. This machine is effective in some instances, but isn’t suited to financial aid for the poor because -as both sides agree- we need tailored solutions that govs inherently can’t supply. Indeed, even Opp conceded that gov treatment is problematic.

Opp’s premise is that the poor make the best use of the money given them. This doesn’t reflect reality, where financial aid is misused. Their proposed solution is to add MORE regulation to a system already consuming 70% in overheads – a figure far higher than private charities.

THUS:
Gov throwing money at the poor is unnecessary, inefficient, and doesn’t break the cycle of poverty. Charities’ mandate is to tailor solutions, monetary or other, and make sure the money is spent well to provide the best possible aid.

To quote Pope John Paul II:
“By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients”.
[[http://is.gd/BiOePA]]

We don’t accept the logical leap from “legitimate violence” to social issues. Legitimate violence safeguards rights, as we claim. Opp failed to show it’s the gov’s duty to change society. It was asserted, but none of the facts, nor the logical base of the point, supports that.

We believe in a gov that doesn’t try to “fix” society – if society believes that it has problems, then it’s society’s job to solve them, not call on gov machinery to magically fix it. As opp asked “Isn’t gov the agent through which society makes decisions and allocates resources?”, we’ve already answered No: gov is society’s last resort safety net. It isn’t there to assist in every conceivable way. Gov is there to make sure that society doesn’t sink low – it’s society’s job to strive higher. That’s why we have charities. As long as people exercise their rights (for example, aren’t starving), gov is doing its job.

Moreover, Opp failed to recognize that it is supposed to protect the status quo, which they agree is problematic. Today govs fail in fixing society’s ills, and big social changes begins from society, not from govs, see our 5th point. This motion pushes the rich for further care of the poor, unlike the inefficient and unsuccessful care that gov forces on the rich today.

Furthermore, in their rebuttal to our 1st point, Opp accepted that it’s the burden of the rich to support the poor, and haven’t attacked the principled argument, thereby conceding that change should come from society, not gov.

Generally, since Opp’s attacks were based on misreps, we need to correct them:
1. Gov’t shouldn’t dictate how charities use their money, and we never claimed so. We said contributors who suspect misuse will stop contributing. If they could do the same with the inefficient usage of their tax money, they would’ve.
2. We specifically said we’ll increase tax breaks, and so we do effectively reduce tax.
3. We haven’t called for further services.

Opp’s fundamental mistake is that we will replace financial aid with services & goods, which was never claimed. Therefore they wasted two points on attacking something which isn’t debated.

We agree people should learn how to balance their budgets, but is it the gov’s duty to give them the money with which to experiment and learn? We say No – only charities, who have the insight on its need and use.

Furthermore, who would track how people are using the money? are they using it for food or alcohol? expensive clothing? are people adhering to their financial plans?

A charity would inherently do that, being deeply involved in the community. Opp can’t be seriously suggesting the gov will micro manage to that degree. We again point out that without adding any new mechanisms to date only 30% of the money allocated to the poor gets to them due to the inherent structure of gov [[http://tinyurl.com/damfof]]

Since Opp advocate additional supervisory layers on top, it leads to an absurd situation where we spend more money to pay more people from the gov budget, leaving less money to pay the poor, being all consumed by the mechanism designed to supervise it…

Even if we agree the money would be helpful and well spent, we’ve already shown how this money should not come from the taxpayer (our point 5). Further enhancements are perfectly tailored for charities.

We don’t see how opp believes entrepreneurship can be developed using money that can hardly cover the gas and electric bill with under minimum income.

Charities enjoy more flexibility than any gov program, and can tailor programs to people of different needs, such as study grants, as opposed to Opp’s stance of throwing money at the problem. An extreme example illustrates it well: most lottery winners end up being poorer than they were, having gotten money thrown at them. We are all for financial guidance and providing incentives and loans for entrepreneurship. These all can and do come from charities.

Opp seem to think that it is especially degrading to go to a soup kitchen. We disagree that helping your family to survive is degrading in any way.
Moreover, we reject Opp’s idea for two reasons:
a. We did not call for additional services by the gov.
b. There’s no need to believe it will be so. Those that can work will work, if they won’t want to go to soup kitchens. Those that can’t work in the general market will find specific charities which will enable them to work within their particular limitations[[http://is.gd/tgc42F]] and those that are completely unable to work will rely on private charities to give them the financial or physical aid they require – so Opp’s doomsday soup-kitchen won’t happen.

We believe that private charities know what they’re doing, and won’t give wheelchairs for those that need only crutches – they’ll either give them crutches, or point them towards another charity, which has crutches.

This also answers Opp’s misconceptions from refutation #2: we agree that in some cases money needs to be given, but in most cases it isn’t, and gov’s general approach can’t differentiate between those cases, nor can it promise that the money will be used well.

Charities, which answer to their donors and volunteers, won’t waste money on cases that don’t need it – imagine how a charity can justify to its donors 33% of its money recipients use the money to buy cigarettes, and that it enables the drinking problems of further 15%, not to mention drug abuse – like gov enables. Only private charities, working in their focused scope, can see when their donations are misused – when giving someone money only worsens his or her problems.

So, yes – money should be given only as a last resort, and by the most discerning means. But there’s a long way between stopping giving money and crowding everyone into soup kitchens. Let gov leave its unsuccessful efforts, and let society answer its problems with its own charity efforts.

Gov’s macro-level view is its problem. When you consider the bigger picture, you miss the details – and those details are people who don’t get what they deserve, or what would help them the most. Far reach means less ability to act on minute resolutions, and so we get a one-size-fits all solution which fits no-one and doesn’t solve the problem.

For example: a poor person gets a job offer, but can’t get to the job because her car battery is dead. Gov can only tell her to wait two weeks until her welfare check arrives. By that time the job will be gone. A charity can simply go out and buy a car battery (or even jump-start the dead battery)[[http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-18n6-1.html]]

Gov’t isn’t organized better – with political appointments and the minister receiving seat due to coalition considerations, you cannot call gov efficient. Also, there’s no promise of consistent funding: while gov itself receives consistent funding, specific ministries such as welfare experience budget cuts without notice.

The Nordic examples are problematic (not only since it wasn’t analyzed, but) since they’re mostly homogeneous democratic countries, however once immigration increased, they’ve failed in reducing their poverty – as can be seen in the immigrant town of Malmo, Sweden[[http://is.gd/UlRLk7]]

But even if we were to adopt Opp’s criteria of outreach, amount of people able to work, and amount of funds, for which they falsely believe the gov has an advantage – again charities are a clear winner: take for example the 1.1 million charities operating in the US alone[[http://is.gd/gbu5TB]], spread across the entire country. Even if each of these charities has just 5 employees, we still have millions of targeted workers doing the job, and billions of dollar in collected donations each year.

Therefore, charities have as much, if not more workers, reach, and money than the gov can hope for, and are all targeted for the purpose with less bureaucracy.

Self-evident things like gov & charities do not need defining, and so far Opp have managed to understand perfectly well what they are. Their analysis of their working is simplistic to the point of fault – gov doesn’t act only on welfare, and has a lot of considerations other than the poor. Considering how money influences politics, the poor are a minor pressure group, mostly under-represented. Therefore, welfare is a minor clause in a country’s budget, and one that is given to fickle changes[[http://tinyurl.com/64ozmxh]]

Also, charities are led by causes, not donors. If the rich agree with the cause, they donate. The rich are those least afraid of the gov so don’t feel any pressure to donate. And not only the rich donate. Worthy causes are taken up by ALL.

Yes, historically govs adapted to public demand – and in this debate, public demand is for better welfare, and adaptation means stopping gov support. Even their example of trade unions is one of gov ENABLING social action, and not acting by itself: gov didn’t organise the unions, it just allowed them to be organised. We believe that gov shouldn’t give charity, too.

The New Deal represents sweeping reforms, not individualized aid such as debated here. So this example strengthens our case of gov as machinery not built for and not good at individualized case-by-case aid. Then when gov money ran out, entered another depression and unemployment wasn’t reduced over time – again an example of gov inefficiency falling to our side[[http://tinyurl.com/64pertz]] Upgrading to a more recent example than 1933, Haiti shown us how everyone contributed, not just the rich, charities were faster to react than gov, and they are still there since driven by genuine desire to aid, not political reasons as govs do.

In reality, gov can’t mandate duties to charities, since they’re not gov instruments. Charities act by their own volition, but naturally when gov makes them seem redundant, then they act less.

1. “endowing responsibility to gov…” No, the assumption here is that removal of gov actions will increase charitable actions’. Again, we’re for the mechanisms that encourage charities, we’re against those that hamper them – namely, the giving of financial aid. Our motion puts greater emphasize on tax breaks at the cost of gov financial aid.

2. “Also for gov what comes with wide SCOPE…” Yes, gov can tackle disasters better, but this debate is about the poor, not disasters. This claim fits exactly with our stance – gov should act in the extreme cases of harmed rights, not in the day-to-day details of poverty.

3. “Americans would have to make at least 10 times…” Yes, but if they’ll give just three times the amount (which is likely, as we’ve explained), then the actual money reaching the poor will be more than they currently receive, since gov’t has so much overhead. More than that, even less money would still lead to better results due to smarter usage of it. Americans contribute more than $300 billion a year to organized private charities and volunteer more than 8 billion hours a year to charitable activities, which can be valued at about $158 billion.
Thus when given the choice, people entrust their donations to private charities not the government[[http://tinyurl.com/3dteydz]]

4. “During economic hardship…” not only then, but whenever there’s political change. Welfare is a very popular budgetary punching bag, since none of its dependants operate lobbyists. Again, Opp is mistaking total gov budget with specific welfare budget.

5. “90% of charity funds are collected AND spent locally…” Yes, that is exactly what we claim – today donors feel that the people elsewhere are ok, due to gov aid, so they only worry about the suffering they see. We need to fight this idea, and increase social responsibility outside of local communities – and that’s done by removing the illusionary safety of gov’s inefficient aid.