What moral principle is observed when one person is forced to give up a portion of their income to pay for someone else's expenses.
Asked by
josie (
30934
)
February 1st, 2010
Shouldn’t charity be voluntary? Where and since when was the government empowered to be a broker of charity?
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
44 Answers
Why do I feel like the question has nothing to do with the details or that the details is what you really want to talk about and not in an open-minded way? Shouldn’t you be flexible when you ask about something on Fluther?
What you’re talking about is NOT charity and has nothing to do with morals. It has to do with the fact that when something unfortunate happens to YOU and yours, there will be some sort of mechanism in place (albeit one with a weak infrastructure) to help you make it through until you either regain your health or job.
Governments aren’t about morality, they’re a way to help balance things in society. When someone is in less fortunate circumstances, the more fortunate pitch in and help them. Sure it isn’t voluntary, but it helps sustain a working economy. It’s for the good of the nation. Without it we’d see the richer get richer and the poor get poorer.
I remember as a child being forced to say sorry to the other child I had a fight with, I didn’t mean it but it was for the best for us. I think what the teachers done was the best thing, even if I wanted to say sorry or not at the time.
Should we let people die just because we our selfish people? Well I don’t think so, they should take the money off us to help people who need it.
Because it works better for all of us that way. There’s the “there but for the grace of God go I” principle. We all want to be sure that if something bad happens to us, there’s a safety net. So we all (or most) agree to provide one.
Then there’s the “good investment” model. People who stay mired in poverty drag everyone else down. They deprive us of good workers and inventions and who knows what they could accomplish with good training. Also, they cost more. Their medical bills are higher, and their housing costs are higher, and they have children that have a hard row to hoe if they are to make it out of poverty.
I don’t know if there’s a moral principle at work here, but there sure is a practical principle.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[1] promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. ”
Somebody has to pay for it!
Reciprocal altruism. It’s an adaptive evolutionary trait, unless you are still a chimp.
I feel like this user can get together with Oxymoron…preferably in a space shuttle…going off
@josie
I am sorry if you were expecting people to be nice to you when they don’t share your views. Its not how fluther works. You have to agree with everything they say if you want respect.
I think @Coting sums up the reasons for forced charity very well. Most people who are for these practices think that they are morally superior and they need to force us to do what is right. They think everyone is too dumb to do the right thing. Its actually funny. (If you look at the facts, conservatives give way more to charities voluntarily than do liberals)
Response moderated
@jackm
Can you back up “conservatives give way more to charities voluntarily than do liberals” per how much they earn over how much liberals earn?
It’s called living in a functional society. Altruism aside, if wealth gets too concentrated and most have little or nothing, extreme social instability results. The rich then tend to lose everything (including their lives). To paraphrase Pearl Buck in The Good Earth..“When the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor…”
@jackm “Conservatives give way more to charities voluntarily than do liberals”? Do you have a source for that? Or a definition of liberal or conservative or even of charity for that matter?
I don’t recall any charity ever asking me where I fit on the political spectrum.
@jackm
Um ok that seems ok to me.
@jackm Just look at the current economy. Wealth concentrating. Middle class shrinking. Actual standard of living for the average person declining. Only the state can issue currency, and if they issue too much, inflation results.
How can data that is not gathered exist?
@stranger_in_a_strange_land
Where did I say data that is not gathered does exist? I said because they charity does not gather it doesn’t mean other people don’t. Specifically Gallup in this case.
If it’s forced,it’s extortion.
The same moral principle that applies when money is taken from us in taxes and used to support things we may not benefit from (e.g. school taxes if you don’t have kids). Everyone benefits from an educated society; the kid who is supported by your taxes may grow up to be the brain surgeon that saves someone in your family. The same holds true for the social safety net, whereby poor people are helped by some of our income.
@jackm I don’t see enough on those particular sources to actually show appropriate methodology, or even a definition of “charity”. But if it makes you feel better, touche, you got me.
But this notion that economics is not a zero sum game, a rising tide lifts all boats, etc. doesn’t matter when people are hungry while others are wealthy beyond comprehension. That’s why income taxes in this country from their inception until 1981 were heavily progressive. Because for decades we saw the rich get richer while the poor worked long grueling hours and died hungry and cold.
The classic definition of economics is: “the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses” source. Go ask any professor of economics, conservative, liberal, or something else if that definition is accurate. I’m betting they’ll all agree that it is accurate. Here’s the thing, the key word is scarce. Economics is all about scarcity, money is all about scarcity. The reason that economics is a zero sum game (or close enough to it) is that there is always going to be scarcity, you can “create” all the wealth you want, but all you will get is inflation. The things people want and need remain scarce, and the accumulation of wealth by a few will still lead to poverty for more.
@Snarp You said it best. @jackm Gallup and their ilk are based on what Mark Twain characterized as “lies, damned lies and statistics” and can be massaged any way a particular group wants.
It is called taxation and the redistribution of wealth in the USA.
@jackm if an adult sees fit to share his selfish streak, or test people’s boundaries in the manner of a child, then the obvious response is to chastise or ignore.
I thought AB was a pretty tough crowd…
galileogirl answered the question. The Constitution gives the government the right to ‘broker charity’.
@jackm You’ve entirely missed the point. There’s no deal being made when you’re talking about one person being rich while most of the world is poor. Zero sum as a set of game theory is an entirely different thing than claiming that a growing economy will eliminate poverty, or that people getting rich doesn’t mean that someone else somewhere is going without. You’re probably right, they probably wouldn’t say it’s a zero sum game, but they would say it’s all about scarcity, and the logical conclusion from that is that things are still scarce and that economics still decides who gets the scarce things and who doesn’t.
@jackm I also did not say gallup was all B.S. I said that the information wasn’t adequate to prove anything. Polls have their place, like in determining what the majority think of some policy, they are not particularly useful in determining whether people actually engage in the behavior you are asking them if they behave in, nor do the results you mention do enough to break down results. The suffer from the ecological fallacy. But it doesn’t really matter if you’re right on that point, so let’s say you’re right, conservatives give more to charity. Let’s say only conservatives give to charity and all conservatives give fifty percent of their income. What does that have to do with whether or not we should use taxes to provide a social safety net if all that charity doesn’t change the fact that too many people can’t afford basic health care, or to feed themselves, or to house their families, in spite of working two jobs?
@Snarp
The point is that you were complaining that the rich were holding down the poor, which is entirely untrue.
Because for decades we saw the rich get richer while the poor worked long grueling hours and died hungry and cold.
You were trying to imply that the rich were getting richer at the poor expense. You (and many other misguided people) tend to think that if we hinder the rich with tariffs and taxes, thus shrinking the gap between rich and poor, then everyone will be happier. The only effect this has is lowering the average wealth of the nation. Making the rich less rich helps no one, and hurts many people.
The unfortunate truth is that conservatives do give more to charities than liberals. Churches are considered to be charities and social/religious conservatives give more and give more regularly than social liberals (particularly in terms of working class Christians who often give a larger percentage of their income). I know that Lester Salamon at Johns Hopkins has done a lot of research on the subject, but I can’t seem to put my hand on the right book at the moment. Small-government conservatives may also decide to give more to charities because they see the private/nonprofit sector as having the responsibility to take care of the poor and needy rather than the government.
@jackm There is no evidence that taxing the rich lowers the wealth of the nation. The United States experienced unprecedented economic growth while tax rates for the highest earners were over 70 percent for decades.
The lives of the average working men and women in America were awful for a hundred years before that. It was government action and union organizing that changed that, not some natural effect of the economic system or benevolent charity of the rich.
Shrinking the gap between rich and poor has not only improved the lives of the majority of Americans, but it has improved our economy. Henry Ford had that figured out – he needed his workers to make enough money to buy his product.
And I didn’t try to imply anything. I think I made it completely clear.
Going back to the original question, however, governments give money to charities for charities to perform socially necessary tasks that are not necessarily considered to be in the realm of the government and they have been doing this for years. Much of social services is outsourced to nonprofits and religious organizations, including foster care services. Without state and federal grant funding, it is unlikely that these organizations would be able to perform these tasks. Nursing homes and not-for-profit hospitals also benefit greatly from government funding through Medicaid and Medicare. Would we want to live in a society in which there is no safety net for the indigent and medically needy? While I will be one of the first to admit that I feel that many not-for-profit hospitals are not focusing enough on their charity work, the sector as a whole is necessary. However, there are simply not enough voluntary donations coming in to fund these and other efforts, even with the government encouraging donations through tax deductions. If you would prefer to choose where more of your money goes, then donate more to nonprofits and take the exemptions so that the government gets to keep less of your money. The problem with this, and why government grants and payments remain necessary, is that people tend to give to feel-good organizations: animals, the arts, etc. They don’t necessarily want to give to help the drug addicts, the homeless, or helping offenders reintegrate into society following a prison sentence.
Sacrificing part of one’s autonomy (in this case, finances) is a necessary part of living in a shared society. You must pay the expenses in order to reap the benefits. Do we want to return to a system of poor houses and child workers?
Ugh. I swore I wasn’t going to get into this.
I’m not sure you mean charities because that is a really fuzzy term. If you mean donations then the proper designation is non-profit organizations. Those are actually quantifiable.. The conservativ document posted mixes self reporting and IRS reporting of tax deductable donations, completely incompatible sources, typical partisanship shoddy reporting.
Conservatives may be more likely to give to church-, school- and local appeals. While those are important they are not the only causes that need to be supported. I don’t belong to a church or support a private school or willing to give directly to the homeless. My “charities” might be Amnesty International, Planned Parenthood and an anonymous donation to a kid who can’t afford a graduation suit.
While a conservative might argue that my choices are not charities because they are not local, I feel they meet a need. On the other hand, I cringe at donations to the NRA though I’m sure others would argue those millions serve a purpose.
The Govenment represents the people, that is unless you do not live in a democracy.
When a democratic governent reditributes wealth it does so, because the majority of the people beliefs in sharing from a moral point of view, or there are economic or security benefits. The notion, however, that in a democracy taxation and redistribution by the government is a matter of “them” taking from “us” is false.
Redistribution of wealth goes both ways. After the War, we had a solid, effective, employed, insured, home-owning middle class and things just kept getting better from the Forties through the Eighties, because there was a 90% tax rate at the highest levels, and wealth was distributed from the wealthy to the less wealthy. Then Reagan and his pals turned things on their head, and began to transfer wealth from the middle class to the wealthy elite, thus engendering the huge income disparities we have now.
Instead of a CEO making 40 or so times what his or her employee makes, they make money on logarithmic scales now, so that 10% of the population controls 90% of the wealth. That is a sign of a sick and decaying State, with hedonism at the top, and suffering at he bottom. True patriots would no wish this to be the case. Right wing ideologues, however, are not necessarily patriots, no matter how much they squeal about it. The proof is in the pudding.
This is what my nephew’s dad asked when his check was docked for child support. He got an earful too.
The government of the U.S. gets it’s power from the people. Most of the general population is too lazy to get involved, so they just give their power away to corporation and politicians.
Some people change their minds when all of a sudden they need support from society. What if there are not enough volunteers who donate or work in charity? The previously held worldview disintegrates.
Answer this question 
Composing members:
0
