We have two side on the question of providing for the poor and needy. There is the status quo and its supporters. They believe it is the function of government to insure that every citizen has a basic level of income. The feel that the government can do the best job to insure this. They fear that if left to private charities and churches that there would be holes and some needy people would slip by. The other side believes that the government should NOT be involved in providing for the needy, that private charities are better placed to catch everyone and insure that no one cheats. Lets examine this. Consider churches. Some churches have lots of funding and can do a lot to help the needy. These churches are in wealthy neighborhoods where very few of their congregants are actually needy. Churches that belong to a national organization, such as the ELCA, the UCC, the UMC, the Roman Catholic church, and others can funnel funds from the wealthier congregations to the poor ones. However, non-denomination churches might have a real problem doing this. As for private charities such as Goodwill, the Salvation Army, the United Way, they are not currently setup to handle needy people other than the homeless. They have established soup kitchens and barracks style sleeping quarters to handle homeless people. Mostly they are focused on specific tragedies, such as fire, flood, weather, that causes temporary homelessness. Can churches and private charities manage helping the needy better by ensuring that people get what they need and no more or no less. Not really, as we pointed out, the money would have to come from wealthy people and, somehow transferred to where the poor and needy live. Some churches might have plenty of funding, others barely enough, and still others little or nothing. Needy people would not know where to go, especially since actual available funding would likely change from month to month. They would need to go someplace different each month to get what they need. There is also the potential problem of some churches picking and choosing who they will help. Some might well turn away people of different faiths, nones, and atheists. Some might choose only to help their own congregations. Under these circumstances, most needy would have no idea where they would need to go to get help and the help they did get would vary widely from month to month, year to year. The current income security programs are doing an outstanding job in this country, contrary to the beliefs of some, most people are on welfare for only a few years, there is very little fraud and cheating, people know where to go for help and the help they do get remains consistent over time, which is a huge help to those who want to get work and get off welfare, medicaid, etc. The point is that shutting down the Income Security programs: welfare, medicaid, medicare, social security, SNAP, and employment security would leave most needy Americans in the lurch with no place to turn, people would get treated differently from place to place and month to month. There would be no consistency. There also would be a huge problem in the interim when the government stops until charity could actually cover the need. The economic disaster that would cause could make the Great Depression look like a minor dip in the economy.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Sep 2013 22:26:17 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015