Should the government and the philianthropists come in to aid of the poor
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1. Charitable aid should focus on the poor; too much giving today goes to other causes!
This increasingly common argument is supported by the so-called “effective altruism” movement, which complains that a dollar spent on a university or park or music school could instead have headed off a dire problem such as, say, river blindness for an impoverished African.
The most specious part of this criticism is the suggestion that donors can’t do both things. Philanthropists are currently producing good results across a vast spectrum of causes, including many efforts to help the poor. In fact, the fastest-growing sector of US private philanthropy in recent years has been overseas aid to poor people. Indeed, the poor in foreign countries now get more help from US donors ($39 billion per year) than from official US government aid ($31 billion).
Moreover, it’s shortsighted and often inhumane to suggest that donating to causes other than poverty reduction is somehow immoral. Yes, places like MIT and Johns Hopkins are wealthy institutions, but voluntary gifts to them ultimately result in things like portable x-ray machines, new vaccines, and inexpensive cell phones that are valuable to all people, especially the poor.
Part of what makes philanthropy powerful and beautiful is its riotous variety. Allowing donors to follow their passions has proven, over generations, to be an effective way of inspiring powerful commitments and getting big results. Cramped definitions of philanthropy that limit donors to approved areas would suffocate many valuable social inventions.
2. Charity is an artifact no longer necessary in a modern welfare state!
Some view private giving and problem-solving as vestiges of simpler times, with which we can now dispense. The public, however, disagrees. In a nationally representative survey of likely US voters in 2015, respondents chose philanthropy over government as their “first choice for solving a social problem in America”—by 47 percent to 32 percent. Asked whether they most trusted entrepreneurial companies, nonprofit charities, or government agencies, 43 percent of respondents chose charities, 28 percent selected entrepreneurial companies, and just 14 percent chose government agencies.
Philanthropy solves problems differently than government. It tends to be more inventive and experimental, quicker, nimbler, more efficient, more varied, more personalized, more interested in transformation than treatment, and more efficient. The public sees this and values it.
3. Charitable donations are just a drop in the bucket!
America’s nonprofit sector now commands 11 percent of our workforce and 6 percent of GDP—not including volunteer time, which, if we attached a reasonable hourly wage to it, nearly equals the $360 billion we donate in cash every year.
The Gates Foundation alone now distributes more overseas assistance than the entire Italian government. It is estimated that in just its first two decades, its overseas vaccine program alone will save the lives of 8 million preschool children. Then consider that members of US churches and synagogues—just one division of America’s larger philanthropic army—send four and a half times as much money overseas to poor people every year as the Gates Foundation does!
The fact that most philanthropy takes place out of the public eye—in small doses, and often in private or even anonymous ways—makes it easy to overlook its size and power. But getting seduced by the giantism of official aid is an egregious mistake. Small actions can and do converge into mighty rivers of cumulative effort.
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