I am not a fan of the inefficient, and ineffective way that the US Government's bloated bureaucracy has turned social services into a mess, and in a discussion with my leftist amigo, Ken, we finally found something to agree on.
If the government would provide citizens with a tax credit for their charitable donations, the presumption is that more people would give to charities, and we could cut out much of the middleman when it comes to public grants to charities, i.e. deflate the bloat.
This would also allow the non-profits to compete in a pseudo-market, not usually a bad thing.
If a citizen decides they do not want to provide any money to charity, or if they think that other government programs are valuable (the military in my estimation), then those will be paid for by paying more to tax and less to charity.
Take one of my favorite charities, Families Forward (www.families-forward.org) which provides temporary housing and job skills training to people who are down on their luck. They have an 80% success rate, and don't have enough room or funds to help all the people they need to in this market. That is a private, non-profit doing the job that welfare has tried to do for along time. Sure they may get federal money, but I say cut out the middleman. Everyone who has worked with the government knows that every place a dollar stops, someone is taking their cut!
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I've worked with the government. It's a hilarious experience. It's impossible for the government to be efficient, because:
1) they're not trying to make a profit.
2) their boss doesn't lose money when they're not doing anything.
3) they're more concerned with being fair when contracting work than saving money.
4) if they spend less money this year, then they get less money next year, so they're inherently motivated to spend their full budget.
5) the more people they're in charge of the more money they make, so there's no motivation for worker efficiency.
We want these people to run our health care and decide where our "spread the wealth" money goes? I'll tell you where most of it goes... bureaucracy.
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