Before There Was Welfare There Was Charity

Originally posted by timetothink
reply to post by Beanskinner

 

Don't worry I THINK all the time...but you are not on the top of my list to share it with.

I will save it for people who want to make a difference in a manner similiar to me...not someone who would fight me on the whole thing...that's the definition of insanity.

edit on 29-5-2012 by timetothink because: (no reason given)

Well then just admit that you do have the answer and that you haven't thought about

how such a move would play out. I have, many of us on this thread have, that is why

we are sticking it to you guys. You can't say you are for a giant change in policy and

then act surprised or insulted when people examine how the process would manifest.

Easy

reply to post by Beanskinner


I just gave you my answer...quit trolling...and listen to everyone else....take you fingers out of your ears.

Originally posted by timetothink
reply to post by EarthCitizen07

 

Let's be honest when laying blame for outsourcing here....government is responsible for overregulation.....making it impossible to compete with other countries.

But the BIGGEST problem is UNIONS.....unionized companies cannot compete with non unionized companies.....the unions are killing the companies they are controlling. Should an auto worker "helping" a machine build a car really be making $30 an hour....then the government uses taxpayer money to bail them out, when the company should have gone belly up?

Let me put it this way.......when the cost of doing business goes up in china......they go to vietnam.....cost of business goes up...then they go to africa.

Yep I see global capitalism playing out quite well. NWO, antichrist, verichip implants, mark of the beast on the head...........why do you guys PRETEND to think it will somehow go another way? How is that possible?

Capitalism is based on worker exploitation, masonry is based on secrecy and religious fanaticism. Guess what right wingers worship money and lucifer. The all seeing eye on the one dollar bill and ordo ab chao is plenty of proof.

Originally posted by timetothink
reply to post by Beanskinner

 

I just gave you my answer...quit trolling...and listen to everyone else....take you fingers out of your ears.

You did not and no body else did either, you are being overtly dishonest.

Why don't you answer the question and have some integrity?

If you guys end welfare, where do all the people go?

Simple question, or should I post all you the responses you have posted to me?

"Why should non-investors and non-management care about profits anymore than investors, management and government inside traders care about our salaries? There is an inherent conflict of interest at all levels which causes friction. "

Because when you work for a company the health of that company effects everyone. Someone on "the line" should care about profits and loss and productivity because it effects their salary.

But when you have Union or Government goons in there saying workers get $30 an hour whether they work hard or not,or the company has profits or loses...how can a company stay in business?? Everything from congressional sallaries, teacher salaries, auto workers, IRS, police....everything, salaries, benefits etc. should be based on merit and according to what the owners of the companies want to pay to get the best workers...if they are cheap and customer service sucks then they eventually go out of business no bailouts...no unions to save the workers.

And until welfare is phased out except for the most extreme permanent cases (disability), people should be contributing for what they get in some...working in businesses as apprentices to get job experience etc...

It won't happen over night but it needs to happen soon and it must start immediately if are to survive.

And like i said before...extreme overhauls of the government must be made at the same time...most of what the government does now needs to be privatized, new businesses created for profit, not to fill the monster government coffers....lobbying made illegal, strict term limits for all politicians....no PACS to get them elected, no big business donations....all that money should be going back into the economy not into fat cats pockets. Alphabet agencies need to be slashed. Military bases abroad closed and our soldiers brought home to protect our borders...that would cut the defense budget immensely without cutting soldiers. Private companies can better run most of what the government does and it would do it cheaper. Plus all the taxes that cover all that crap would be kept by taxpayers and businesses and used to spur the economy and create even more jobs.

But no one listens.

reply to post by Beanskinner



There isn't just one answer and it doesn't happen overnight...you really are approaching this in a childish manner...
welfare would have to be phased out....but it needs to start. I didn't go to college and get a degree in economics or community planning but i am smart enough that something needs to be done and soon....and it will take smarter minds than you and I to figure it out...you are being disingenuous by thinking you have the only answer. Welfare is not the only answer...it is the worst answer.

Originally posted by timetothink
reply to post by Beanskinner

 

Many of us have already answered your questions over and over and over and over again in 23 pages of this thread but YOU are not listening......not gonna do it again because you demand it of me....read the entire thread again.

And comparing apples and oranges in jobs doesn't work for your argument.....day traders use their own money to gamble on the market...the win or loss is theirs.....stop throwing out useless comparisons, it just sounds immature.

While I don't really care about day traders, I think there is definitely a big problem with big investment firms specualting money away, some credit rating bureau gives them AAA, some douchebag insurance company(like AIG) comes along and insures without questioning. then the market bubbles crash, AIG cannot make payment, government comes along bails out everyone without asking tax payers, tax payers get screwed.

reply to post by timetothink


Your answer of course is the same answer that has been repeated throughout the thread. The problem is that it usually worked with public funds.

Benjamin Franklin Timeline

With Franklin's talent for popularizing an idea, funds were obtained from both the Pennsylvania legislature and private citizens in 1751; Franklin received a promise from the legislature to match whatever he collected from the public. This fundraising method, now known as a matching fund drive, was a new technique.

This was before the US even existed and there was already government involvement in welfare. Local charity may work great but on a larger level it took something else even when the country was only 13 colonies.

Originally posted by timetothink
reply to post by doomedtoday

 

How in any stretch of the imagination was that an attack on you? This was a girl who thought because she was 19 with a 2 year old she should be able to sit home and her family and the government should support her....I think you have a chip on your shoulder and that is not my problem. Maybe somewhere deep inside you feel that maybe you should put your time into a better paying fulltime job and save college for when you don't have a child to support? How does it feel to be summed up like that by someone who doesn't know you?

Chip on my shoulder? Yeah, probably. I'm not going to deny that it is most likely attitudes such as your own that put it there though. I quoted the Seabag's comment, the guy who quoted the original comment of yours that I am assuming you are under the impression I quoted. He did a very good job at making it look as if he is pointing fingers at some of us, it was hard not to assume that it could have possibly been an attack targeting those with opinions opposite of his own.

As far as putting my time into a better paying full time job. What the hell do you think I am going to school for? I tried finding a better job for over 4 years because those around me kept preaching about not going into the debt to go to school. I did the job searching while working for freaking minimum wage, I couldn't afford a vehicle on that pay so there was no way for me to relocate. I had literally looked for every possible "better job" in my local area as well as spoke with people in my community. You know what EVERY response was?

"We're sorry but we cannot hire you without some form of certification or education."

Hell even asking about apprenticeships in HVAC and Electrician type jobs, they all told me that I need to go to trade school and get certified first. Some said that if I went to trade school they might be able to apprentice me while helping me get the certification but I had to at the very least go to school for it. I live in east TN and A LOT of people do trades, I don't know why they all kept telling me this but I am not exaggerating in any way when I tell you that they ALL of them told me the same thing in different wording. Even a friend's father who holds a higher position as an electrician for a company said that he doesn't understand why they now do it like that when many years ago he was able to start as an apprentice with no schooling but he has stated that he indeed is very aware of the fact that it is indeed a requirement for his company and most others nowadays.

Wanna know what the Air Force people told me when I tried applying as soon as I was 18?

"The military can't take you because of your medical history."

That was a major letdown because I was under the impression that joining the military was a surefire way to be successful for someone with a lot of drive and determination. My grandfather quit school at 16 and had his father sign a paper to get him into the Army Air Force, where he served for around 24 years before retiring and working at a factory for about the same amount of time. I respected and admired my grandfather and kind of wanted to go the military route too. I was always good at math and physical science and playing around with and repairing electronics and mechanical things. I wanted to learn engineering in the Air Force.

Unfortunately my mother wasn't as honorable as her father and quit school only because "they told her she couldn't be a cop when she finished." She married an illiterate man from a very poor family ( my father ). So yeah, I know a thing or two about growing up in poverty and on "your dollar" because I made the decisions for my parents and I choose such a life...

So since I hardly had any alternative I made what in my opinion was a very responsible decision in accepting the fact that like it or not, if I ever want to be able to provide for my family properly without being damn near completely broke for the remainder of my miserable life, that sucking it up and paying back those student loans is the not just the only but also the best option. Even though I grew up in poverty the only debt I have ever had is student loans, I have never and will never accept a credit card or small loan from one of the many loan companies around here, my parents and those around me abused both, and not being completely retarded, I learned from their mistakes.

Why do you people hate providing welfare to the poor so much but at the same time you tell the poor not to seek an education that would allow them to qualify for a job that pays enough money not to need government assistance? You can't answer that without using a question that does not answer the question being asked can you... Hate is a terrible thing to possess so much of my friend. I will never be capable of hating the poor because as many of you were not, I was once one of them and will always have that in my past. It is neither our parents nor how they raised us that make the man we become, I believe that is completely within our own control and to claim otherwise is an excuse.

You should not only be proud of your fellow man but also happy that people like me refuse to accept that we NEED others help and seek means of providing for ourselves even though we were raised by parents relying on those "free handouts" you want to see eliminated. I'm fairly sure you aren't exactly wealthy enough to be one of the people "funding" the majority of that "welfare" anyway, I'll probably never be that wealthy either. So why does it really matter so much to you? I'm guessing it has to be because of that "chip on your shoulder." I never asked you for a single dime, nor will I ever. Get over yourself!

reply to post by EarthCitizen07


How about we come down to earth for one minute and deal with a reality where there are no lucifer worshiping antichrist NWO robot whatevers.......

We need to get unions in check in this country, not trade with countries who wont buy our products equally and who don't pay worker wages equal to ours, and we to tax up the ying yang companies that go overseas to have their products made.

Buy American and making it profitable to do so has to be our main goal.

Originally posted by timetothink
"Why should non-investors and non-management care about profits anymore than investors, management and government inside traders care about our salaries? There is an inherent conflict of interest at all levels which causes friction. "

Because when you work for a company the health of that company effects everyone. Someone on "the line" should care about profits and loss and productivity because it effects their salary.

But when you have Union or Government goons in there saying workers get $30 an hour whether they work hard or not,or the company has profits or loses...how can a company stay in business?? Everything from congressional sallaries, teacher salaries, auto workers, IRS, police....everything, salaries, benefits etc. should be based on merit and according to what the owners of the companies want to pay to get the best workers...if they are cheap and customer service sucks then they eventually go out of business no bailouts...no unions to save the workers.

corrupt unions can definitely be a problem, but so are corrupt corporations and corrupt government.
everyone looks out primarly for themself and god looks out for everyone. I am not encouraging irresponsibility, I am simply stating the obvious/inherit conflicts of interest. sure if everyone does their job everything is dandy, but the real world is not cinderalla.

And until welfare is phased out except for the most extreme permanent cases (disability), people should be contributing for what they get in some...working in businesses as apprentices to get job experience etc...

there is no reason for welfare to be phased out. It simply needs to be cleaned up.

It won't happen over night but it needs to happen soon and it must start immediately if are to survive.

And like i said before...extreme overhauls of the government must be made at the same time...most of what the government does now needs to be privatized, new businesses created for profit, not to fill the monster government coffers....lobbying made illegal, strict term limits for all politicians....no PACS to get them elected, no big business donations....all that money should be going back into the economy not into fat cats pockets. Alphabet agencies need to be slashed. Military bases abroad closed and our soldiers brought home to protect our borders...that would cut the defense budget immensely without cutting soldiers. Private companies can better run most of what the government does and it would do it cheaper. Plus all the taxes that cover all that crap would be kept by taxpayers and businesses and used to spur the economy and create even more jobs.

But no one listens.

privatisation is a terrible idea and only leads to more consolidation of money, power and influence. We have been experiencing this with reagan and thatcher. Only business wins and the workers lose! Why do you LOVE business so much? Are you a billionare or a paid poster?

as for the military if I were president I would retire 2/3 of the reserves(1 million out of 1.5 million) and then take 1/3 of the active duty and put them on reserve. that means 1 million active and 1 million reserve instead of 3 million total.

reply to post by EarthCitizen07


Why do you hate the military so much and want to put them out of work are you a paid poster???

I am a homemaker...real glamorous married to a cop....no riches here...don't own anything but a house and a car.

I see the danger of a country completely run by government....they always end up in a dictatorship...some take longer than others...but whenever freedom of capitalism is made the enemy and government slowly takes more and more responsibility for the good of the whole...it always ends badly.

If GM and Chrysler where allowed to fail eventually smaller companies would have been able to find there way in to the game....the problem is the governments idea of to big to fail. No one is ever to big to fail....that is the only way others get a chance at the table....I am not for big business i am for freedom and for people having the right to own a business...once the government starts taking it never stops and before you know mom and pop aren't safe either.

Just like fighting for freedom of speech you can't just fight for the speech you like...you have to fight for all of it...

Originally posted by timetothink
reply to post by EarthCitizen07

 

How about we come down to earth for one minute and deal with a reality where there are no lucifer worshiping antichrist NWO robot whatevers.......

We need to get unions in check in this country, not trade with countries who wont buy our products equally and who don't pay worker wages equal to ours, and we to tax up the ying yang companies that go overseas to have their products made.

Buy American and making it profitable to do so has to be our main goal.

edit on 29-5-2012 by timetothink because: (no reason given)

Freedom and liberty does not exist. If only some people could be realists. Why do you think jews have been persecuted in russia and germany? Socialists and communists are forced to imprison and/or kill because some people have a love affair with lucifer.

As for the pyramid with a disconnected all seeing eye and ordo ab chaos is my fantasy? ok.....take out a $1 bill and then apologise!

Originally posted by timetothink
reply to post by EarthCitizen07

 

Why do you hate the military so much and want to put them out of work are you a paid poster???

If you can make a good case for needing 3 million I might listen...no guarantees though cause I heard it all already and its boring. At least I say a multifaceted approach is necessary where as others just pick one or the other.

From what I am reading you are starting to make sense. Good!

reply to post by LDragonFire


Charity Navigator "Your guide to intelligent giving" offers these statistics:

Few people realize how large charities have become, how many vital services they provide, and how much funding flows through them each year. Without charities and non-profits, America would simply not be able to operate. Their operations are so big that during 2010, total giving was nearly $291 billion.

How big is the sector?

Total giving to charitable organizations was $290.89 billion in 2010 (about 2% of GDP). This is an increase of 3.8% from 2009 when giving was $280.3 billion.

As in previous years, the majority of that giving came from individuals. Specifically, individuals gave $211.77 billion (73%) representing a 2.7% increase over 2009.

Giving by bequest was $22.83 billion (up 18.8%), foundations gave $41 billion (down 0.2%), and corporations donated $15.29 billion (up 10.6%).

35% of all donations, or $100.63 billion, went to religious organizations (up only 0.8%). Much of these contributions can be attributed to people giving to their local place of worship. The next largest sector was education with $41.67 billion (up 5.2%).

Donations were also up to foundations (1.9%), health charities (1.3%), public benefit charities (6.2%), arts, culture, humanities charities (5.7%). International charities saw the biggest growth in giving (15.3%), in part, because of the earthquake in Haiti (January 2010).

Giving to several categories of charities was virtually flat in 2010 including donations to human services, environmental and animal charities.

Revised Giving USA data shows that total giving has grown in current dollars in every year since 1954 except for 1987, 2008 and 2009.

In 1996, The Cato Institute offered this policy report:

Detailing the failures of the current welfare system and proposed liberal and conservative reforms is easy. However, critics of welfare have an obligation to go beyond attacking the system to provide an effective, compassionate alternative.

The first step is to recognize that the 1996 welfare reform legislation falls far short of what is needed to fix the system. Let’s look at some of its problems.

The "1996 welfare reform legislation the Cato Institute is referring to is actually the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act:

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is a United States federal law considered to be a fundamental shift in both the method and goal of federal cash assistance to the poor. The bill added a workforce development component to welfare legislation, encouraging employment among the poor. The bill was a cornerstone of the Republican Contract with America and was introduced by Rep. E. Clay Shaw, Jr. (R-FL-22) who believed welfare was partly responsible for bringing immigrants to the United States.[1] Bill Clinton signed PRWORA into law on August 22, 1996, fulfilling his 1992 campaign promise to "end welfare as we have come to know it."[2]

Encouraged? Really? The U.S. Health and Human Serivices Department (HHS) offered this fact sheet:

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996

On August 22, President Clinton signed into law "The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193)," a comprehensive bipartisan welfare reform plan that will dramatically change the nation's welfare system into one that requires work in exchange for time-limited assistance. The law contains strong work requirements, a performance bonus to reward states for moving welfare recipients into jobs, state maintenance of effort requirements, comprehensive child support enforcement, and supports for families moving from welfare to work -- including increased funding for child care and guaranteed medical coverage.

Oh requires! Really! What Wikipedia means by "encourage" is that The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 requires work in exchange for time-limited assistance. Why would Wikipedia claim this act "encourages" work in exchange for time limited assistance? In the next post we will see what The Cato Institute says.

Continued....

The bill is supposed to establish a five-year lifetime limit for welfare benefits. One could be forgiven, therefore, for believing that after five years welfare recipients would be off the public dole. Well, not in the District of Columbia, to cite just one example. Almost simultaneously with signing the bill, President Clinton granted the district a waiver exempting it from the five-year limit. That waiver lasts 10 years, so district welfare recipients will not be subject to the time limit cutoff until 2006.

Several states also have waivers that would allow recipients to exceed the five-year time limit. Moreover, many state waivers guarantee a job after five years or provide for the continuation of benefits if no job is found.

The Cato Institute is pointing to the shell game the 1996 legislation really is, pretending to limit aid to people and requiring them to get work within five years of accepting the government assistance, but after all the exemptions from the legislation, and even all the qualifications within the act, the welfare state has remained largely has it has been since Johnson first declared war on poverty back in the mid 1960's.

Today, the federal, state and local governments combined, spends 6.3 Trillion dollars in various ways:

www.usgovernmentspending.com...

Spending $1 trillion on pensions, $1.1 trillion on health care, $0.9 trillion on both defense and education, and $0.7 trillion on welfare, this does not accurately reflect the perception the pro-welfare members in this thread want to represent. These pro-welfare members claim that education is a part of welfare, and that health care as well, so if we are going to go by what seems to be the general consensus in this thread of what welfare is, then technically the federal government is not spending $0.7 trillion but is instead spending $3.6 trillion on welfare.

Of course, some want to lump Social Security into the fray, which would add yet another trillion dollars to federal tax dollars. However, if we are to truly understand where this $1 trillion of tax dollars are going and who they are spent on, it is best we first have a better understanding of how federal budgets are funded and how they are spent. Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go?

In fiscal year 2011, the federal government spent $3.6 trillion, amounting to 24 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). While the level of 2011 expenditures - as a share of GDP - remains high due to the economic downturn, the composition of the budget largely resembles the patterns of recent years. Of that $3.6 trillion, $2.3 trillion was financed by federal tax revenues. The remaining $1.3 trillion was financed by borrowing; this deficit will ultimately be paid for by future taxpayers. (See box for the recession's impact on the budget.) As shown in the graph below, three major areas of spending each make up about one-fifth of the budget:

Defense and international security assistance for 2011, was a total of $718 billion, 20% of the total budget. Iraq and Afghanistan accounted for $158 billion.

Social Security, also accounting for 20% of the budget, was a total of $731 billion. 35.6 million retired workers, in December 2011, were being payed out benefits that averaged $1,229 per month.

Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP, the three federally funded health insurance programs, accounted for 21% of the budget, totaling $769 billion in 2011.

Safety net programs, which is "support programs that provide aid (other than health insurance or Social Security benefits) to individuals and families facing hardship", was 13% of the 2011 budget, and a total of $466 billion was spent.

Interest on the national debt, and it important to remind that of the total $3.6 trillion spent in 2011, only $2.3 trillion of this money spent was financed by tax revenues. The remaining $1.3 trillion was raised by borrowing money to add to the national debt of over $14 trillion dollars (at that time) and $230 billion of that $3.6 trillion was spent on interest to that ever expanding debt.

But let's just take a look at how much of the $731 billion that was spent on Social Security in 2011 and ask ourselves, how much of that money was used to pay administrative costs. The The actuarials published by the Social Security Administration are only as recent as 2010, but in that year 0.9% of that budget was spent on administrative costs, totaling $6,525,000,000. Presumably, of that $6.5 billion a good chunk of it went to pay the federal employees for ensuring the Social Security Administration functions properly. Less than 1% of the total Social Security budget for these administrative costs is really quite impressive.

Continued....

Is it possible that the federal government is better at administering charity than private charities? For many choosing which charity they want to give to the gold standard for deciding is low administrative costs:

Donating to charity is a worthy action. But which charity? Would it surprise you to know that the criterion that is most often used to decide that question is also the most unreliable?

Would it surprise you more to know that many charities are aware of how flawed the criterion is and play it like a violin? A few months ago a friend of mine who runs an international relief agency phoned me complaining about another charity.

"Do you know what they're doing?" he fumed. "They're buying medicine in Canada for 10 cents a pill and booking the American retail cost of the medicine as an in-kind contribution. Do you know the retail value? Seven bucks a pill. They're padding their in-kind contributions by millions of dollars."

I hung up a little perplexed at first. It wasn't like the organization was buying pills for a dime and selling them for $7; it was were giving them away. Outside of inflating their donations for bragging rights, I couldn't see the harm. Then it hit me.

I went to the organization's website and there it was, one click off the home page: Nearly 90% of its donations in 2011 went directly to the group's programs. Its administrative costs? Just 5% of the budget. But if the agency was inflating in-kind contributions, it could hike the value of its donations to make its administrative costs seem smaller.

Here, Jack Shakely, president emeritus of the California Community Foundation, is pointing to an admirable administrative cost in 5% but illustrating how charities can rig their figures to make it appear as if their budget is really lower than it is, by inflating the cost paid for what they actually paid of goods then given to the poor. It's a fudging of the book designed not to screw over the poor, but designed to give donors what they want to see, but even so, and even if we're to accept their 5% figure of administrative cost, this is 4% more than the federal government is claiming they spend on administering Social Security. Are all administrative agencies as cost effective as the Social Security Administration claims to be? Is it possible that the federal government is playing the same kind of games in reporting how much is spent on administrative costs?

According to Laffer, Winegarden and Childs, in The Economic Burden Caused by Tax Code Complexity $12.4 billion is paid in administrative costs alone. Of course, the pro-welfare state crowd complains about military expense and it would be fair to say that a good portion of the military budget is being paid by income tax revenue, so for the sake of argument why don't we say that in terms of administrative costs $6.2 billion of that $12.4 billion is fairly included in all the various welfare programs that include public assistance programs, health care, pensions, and education. Between the $6.5 billion spent on administrative costs for Social Security, and at least $6.2 billion spent on administrative costs for the IRS, thus far we have an expenditure of $12.7 billion spent on administrative costs for welfare programs.

If we are going to fairly, and without bias, compare private charities to government acting as charity to understand which is the better solution, then we have to understand that part of a charities administrative costs is the money it takes to raise money. Fundraising is an expense, and the $12.4 billion spent on IRS administrative costs illustrates this handily, and that organization is spending that amount based upon compulsory contributions, where charities rely upon the voluntary donations. As Ezra Klien of the Washington Post put it:

An apples-to-apples comparison would not leave you with the 2 percent of total Medicare spending often bandied about in debate. That doesn't count, for instance, Medicare's premium collection, which is done through the tax code, and thus through the IRS. Nor does it count most of Medicare's billing, which is outsourced -- and this might surprise people -- to private insurers like Blue Cross Blue Shield and listed under vendor services rather than program administration. A more straightforward estimate, according to experts I've spoken to, would be in the range of 5 to 6 percent.

Continued....

If Ezra Klien is correct and part of the Medicaid administrative costs is outsourced then listed under a separate expense like "vendor services" then the federal government is indeed doing the same thing charities are doing to make it appear as if their administrative costs are lower than they really are.

Forbes puts it this way:

But most important, because Medicare patients are older, they are substantially sicker than the average insured patient — driving up the denominator of such calculations significantly. For example: If two patients cost $30 each to manage, but the first requires $100 of health expenditures and the second, much sicker patient requires $1,000, the first patient’s insurance will have an administrative-cost ratio of 30%, but the second’s will have a ratio of only 3%. This hardly means the second patient’s insurance is more efficient — administratively, the patients are identical. Instead, the more favorable figure is produced by the second patient’s more severe illness.

This favorable figure is reminiscent of Jack Shakely's tale of a charity purchasing Canadian pills for ten cents but listing the U.S. price listing of the pill as an expense when giving these ten cent pills to the needy at $7 a pill. The more one spends on goods and services going directly to the poor the better the annual administrative costs look. The difference between Medicaid and the charity purchasing ten cent Canadian pills is that this charity doesn't have the IRS collecting their revenue for them. That charity may be getting federal assistance, but if it is somebody got paid to apply for those federal grants and that gets listed on their administrative costs, but Medicaid has no concern for how they raised their budget spent, that concern belongs to the IRS.

Forbes continues:

A more accurate measure of overhead would therefore be the administrative costs per patient, rather than per dollar of medical expenses. And by that measure, even with all the administrative advantages Medicare has over private coverage, the program’s administrative costs are actually significantly higher than those of private insurers. In 2005, for example, Robert Book has shown that private insurers spent $453 per beneficiary on administrative costs, compared to $509 for Medicare. (Indeed, Robert has written the definitive paper on this subject, from which the above figure is taken.)

On May 24th, 2011 in an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Barbara Boxer claimed that "There's a 1.5 percent to 2 percent overhead in Medicare. The insurance companies have a 20 percent to 30 percent overhead." Politifact rated Boxer's remark as "half-true" claiming:

There is some disagreement over how much Medicare pays in overhead. It could be a few percentage points higher than the 1 to 2 percent that Boxer cites. But Boxer’s numbers are defensible since they come straight from the Medicare trustees’ report.

Meanwhile, Boxer’s 20 percent-to-30 percent figure for the private sector is more squishy. Some plans have overhead rates that high, but only a fraction do, and the industry-wide average is quite a bit lower -- 11 to 12 percent.

We’re convinced that Boxer’s underlying point -- that private plans have higher overhead than government plans -- is correct, if for no other reason than that profits matter only for private insurers. But for most plans and patients, the difference between Medicare overhead and private-sector overhead is not as great as she suggests. So we rate her statement Half True.

T he Medicare Trustee's report Politifact is refering to states:

The Medicare Program is the second-largest social insurance program in the U.S., with 48.7 million beneficiaries and total expenditures of $549 billion in 2011. The Boards of Trustees for Medicare (also Boards) report annually to the Congress on the financial operations and actuarial status of the program. Beginning in 2002, there is one combined report discussing both the Hospital Insurance program (Medicare Part A) and the Supplementary Medical Insurance program (Medicare Part B and Prescription Drug Coverage). The Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) prepares the report under the direction of the Boards.

Continued....

As Timothy Gietner writes in Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance:

Historically, the cost of administering the HI trust fund as remained relatively low in comparison with the benefits amounts. The ration of administrative expenses to benefit payments has generally fallen within the range of 1 to 3 percent.

Geithner is actually predicting a rise in administrative costs based on long term projections of a rise in elder recipients in the next few years, but this is the report that Politifact went by to give Boxer a pass on her estimate of 1 to 2 percent overhead. Let's, just for the sake of argument, grant Medicare is operating at around 2 percent of their annual budget. That means out of the $549 billion spent in 2011, $1.098 billion was spent on administrative costs. Add that to the all ready existing $12.7 billion and now we have $13.798 billion in administrative costs for federal welfare programs. That's just Medicare, there are two other federal health insurance programs that also come with administrative costs.

Then there is education. In 2011 The Student Aid Administration requested $1.17 billion for administrative costs. Given that the year before they got every single dollar they asked for and each year listed before that got more than they asked for, it is safe to say this administrative agency received at least a cool billion to cover administrative costs. Add that to the $13.798 billion and we now have $14.798 billion. At this point, just using the administrative costs listed so far this comes to a 4.11 percent of the total federal budget and we have only listed one administrative agency within the federal education department, only listed Social Security out of the administrative costs for pensions, only listed Medicare out of the health insurance administrative costs, and have not even begun to list the administrative costs for the food stamp program and other public assistance programs of the federal government, including the so called "safety net" programs. Were I to keep digging and finding the administrative costs to these agencies, it is a given the 4.11 percent of the $3.6 trillion dollar budget will grow to a much higher percentage.

This is the kind of work and research that is necessary to understand the administrative costs of federal welfare programs, especially if we are going to compare those administrative costs to private charities. That, of course, was what was meant by "evidence of corruption" in private charity, and presumably this "evidence" only being referenced was actually what was referenced from sonny's post where he linked a local ABC news report about charities that outsource to private for profit fundraising companies.

Charity Navigator reports:

In 2007, commercial fundraisers (in California) collected a total of about $370.3 million in charitable contributions. The average distribution to charity from all campaigns conducted by commercial fundraisers in 2007 was 43.63 percent, an increase of 7.15% over the average reported in 2005

This is the case in virtually every state, where a huge portion of outsourced fund raising goes to the administrative costs of the for profit company doing the fundraising, but this is for those charities that are engaged in this outsourcing, and if they were the federal government they wouldn't be listing these outsourced costs as administrative costs but would be listing them under "vendor services" instead.

More importantly, if a donor does not want to give to a charity that outsources its fund raising to for profit fund raisers they have resources like Charity Navigator to help them find charities with much lower administrative costs. These same donors, presuming they are also taxpayers, have no choice in choosing a welfare system with lower administration costs.

Continued...

There are countless charities with low administrative costs to choose from. Given the lateness of the hour and that so much time was spent illustrating the cost of administering federal welfare programs I will end tonight with one single charity to compare against federal spending on welfare.

Goodwill Industries was first formed 11 years before the "Personal Income Tax" was passed by Congress:

Morgan's mission was started originally as an urban outreach ministry, in 1902, of Morgan Methodist Chapel, Boston, Massachusetts, which was pastored by Reverend Edgar J. Helms, a Methodist minister and early social innovator. Helms and his congregation collected used household goods and clothing being discarded in wealthier areas of the city, then trained and hired the unemployed or bereft to mend and repair them. The products were then redistributed to those in need or were given to the needy people who helped to repair them. In 1915, Helms hosted a visit to Morgan Memorial by representatives of a workshop mission in Brooklyn, NY, and they learned about the innovative programs and the operating techniques of the "Morgan Memorial Cooperative Industries and Stores, Inc." Helms was subsequently invited to visit in New York. Out of these exchanges came Brooklyn's willingness to adopt and adapt the Morgan Memorial way of doing things, while Helms was persuaded that Brooklyn's name for its workshop, "Goodwill Industries," was a marked improvement over the Morgan Memorial name. Thus was officially born Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries, and that, plus Brooklyn's interest and ties, became the foundation on which Goodwill Industries was to be built as an international movement. (From For the Love of People, by John Fulton Lewis.)

Today Goodwill has become a $4 billion non-profit organization.[1] Helms described Goodwill as an "industrial program as well as a social service enterprise...a provider of employment, training and rehabilitation for people of limited employability, and a source of temporary assistance for individuals whose resources were depleted."

Charity Watch rates the Goodwill Industries an "A".

(The link to "charity watch" that Wikipedia takes you to another Wikipedia article, I have replaced that link with one that takes you directly to the actual Charity Watch website. In that site the rating guide page is a solicitation for a $40 donation membership in order to get their published ratings guide three times a year)

Here is what Goodwill Industries, in their own words, has to report:

Our Results for 2011

People served through employment and training programs: 4.2 million
Mission services provided: 107 million
People who earned a job with Goodwill’s help : 189,000
Estimated total earnings of people who earned a job with Goodwill’s help: $2.95 billion
Personal and family support services provided: 10 million
Total revenue generated by Goodwill organizations: $4.43 billion
Total revenue spent directly on programs: 82 percent
Total number of donors (includes repeat donations): 79 million
Total number of retail stores: Over 2,650 and an online auction site

Tomorrow I will put more time into citing more studies and looking at more charities to compare with the federal government and their cost of administering welfare.