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usrname

(398 posts)
13. I never understood how people
Fri May 4, 2012, 02:08 PM
May 2012

could think private charities are more efficient than government spending.

For every dollar via taxes that is budgeted for some social welfare program, maybe 90¢ is spent for the program and 10¢ is spent on administration. Medicare, for example, has a very low administrative overhead. Social security has a very low overhead.

Even in classical welfare programs, the money spent goes to the workers at the welfare center, goes to the welfare recipient, goes to buying office items... it doesn't stay in the government.

But a private charity doesn't work that way. If the charity receives $100,000,000, it will hold that money in an interest bearing account and use the interest to pay for everything else: administration, supplies, and charitable disbursement. Usually, the amount handed out to recipients, like cancer research labs in the case of the Komen foundation, is around 5 - 8% of the fund. It's highly inefficient.

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