Arthur Brooks on Coercion vs. Charity

He writes,

Consider the present total that Americans give annually to human-service organizations that assist the vulnerable. It comes to about $40 billion, according to Giving USA. Now suppose that we could spread that sum across the 48 million Americans receiving food assistance, with zero overhead and complete effectiveness. It would come to just $847 per person per year.

Or take the incredible donation levels that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2011. The outpouring of contributions exceeded $3 billion, a record-setting figure that topped even the response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. But even this historic episode raised enough to offset only 3 percent of the costs the storm imposed on the devastated areas of Louisiana and Mississippi. Voluntary charity simply cannot get the job done on its own.

This is not fully persuasive. It may be misleading to describe what a charity-only safety net would work like using an extrapolation based on current social arrangements.

1. If we took away today’s safety net and left that income in private hands, people would have more to donate to charity.

2. If we took away today’s safety net, then affluent people who now assume that government is taking care of those in need would instead take the view that donations are needed.

14 thoughts on “Arthur Brooks on Coercion vs. Charity

  1. 48M is way too high. And for a family of four that would be a decent amount for inexpensive food.

    $65/ week is tight but cooking with cheaper ingredients might be even more nutritious than processed food.

    And double that if we get half the 48M to buy their own food. Who ever claimed charity was supposed to match a bloated perverse incentive (and probably inflationary) system?

    • According to the USDA annual report, the SNAP numbers are 48 MM recipients and $1600 annual benefit.

      So $847 annually in private charity amounts to ~50% of the government total, and presumably that would step up a lot in the face of a reduced safety net.

      Of course, that’s not an apples to apples comparison, as SNAP is not the only government program to aid vulnerable people (Medicaid is surely the biggest expenditure).

      • My family literally eats as well as we can afford to in time. we dont eat out much, but we buy healthy. We spend about $1200/yr per person on groceries
        We are overspending because we care more about time and nutrition. We throw a lot of greens away. The kid could, for example, cut milk intake in half with no significant loss. We buy wild sockeye salmon. It is a killer on the wallet and overkill on the nutrition. The point is, we can’t eat any better right now but we could cut our bill in half using more rice and oatmeal and grits and the like and by not wasting the trying to get kids to eat exotic vegetables and sticking with the frozen broccoli I had every single day as a kid.

        • 2000 calories of vitamin fortified wheat flours costs 60 cents, retail and has 60 grams of protein – a full day’s amount. Add a 10-cent egg and you’ve got 350 more calories, 30 more grams of protein, and 24 grams of essential fats. Substitute in some cheap wheat or corn bran to add 40 grams of dietary fiber. Oh, what the heck, throw in 30 more cents for cooking costs and some other good stuff.

          That is, a full grown man can survive fine on tasty, fortified egg bagels and water for under a dollar a day, and at retail prices. Imagine the economies of scale and price negotiating advantage of mass production. Compare nutrition labels, an egg bagel is surprisingly close to a protein bar.

        • That just does not seem plausible.

          A quick search of online numbers shows that the thriftiest estimates for annual American grocery bills are $2000 annually. If you are indulging, as you claim your family is, the higher estimates are $4000-$5000 annually.

          My wife and I eat out more than we should, which means our grocery bill is lower than it would be if we ate every meal at home. And we still spend ~$3000-$4000 per person annually at the grocery.

          And the claim that you could cut a $1200 annual bill in half is outlandish. That come out to a year’s worth of $0.54 meals. Good luck.

  2. Let’s just take the second example, storm disasters first.

    They are risks. They are (or were) insurable risks. To measure such an event by “total costs” is to predispose the answer you seek. To spread all risks over the taxpayer base would shift the “value” of uses or activities. To spread some risks only, is to take from some and give to others.

    To deal with the other “needs,” what is missing is dealing with why particular needs arise, not just how they may best be met.

  3. Isn’t coercion involved in the subsidizing of risky land areas and in reducing employment and the supply of goods snd services…

  4. The second point is especially interesting. As things stand right now, it is hard to find a charity that is more than just a way to make the donors feel good.

    • Maybe making the owners feel good is the first requirement of any charity. People do a lot of back end rating of charity effectiveness now which is good. I wonder what other front end factors go into a predictably good charity. Habitat for humanity is hands on and produces a tangible and quantifiable result. Alcoholics Anonymous seems to have discovered behavioral economics before most economists did.

  5. I like Brooks, but this is all about reform icon-ism. He wants conservatives to make peace, publicly anyway, with the safety net. The better to win elections and change incentives in the existing system than try to convince the public some scaled-down version of the safety net (or none at all) is in their long-term interests. The mixture of guilt for some, and risk for others is just not politically viable — or so runs the logic.

  6. Brooks ignores entirely the concept of and research on crowding-out, which you allude to. Obviously (to anyone but Brooks, I guess), if the Government takes a large percentage of your earnings and provides a safety net, you will be (a) less able, and (b) less inclined to give to charity. That’s crowding-out.

    A more interesting question is: what is the level at which we can maximize the sum of Government (tax)-provided support plus charity? I think Brooks is trying to argue that crowding-out is negligible, and if taxes were lowered, private charity would not make up for it. Maybe so. But it is far from self-evident.

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