Maui Wildfire: Disaster, Scandal…Coverup?

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Jake,

I’ll donate from my earnings from my up-and coming part-time venture.

As for the “stimulus,” the printing of money to provide for it raised the price of everything and thus made giving help to anyone much more expensive.

In between work, rest, and hospital convalescence, I still haven’t found out where to send the money back. The IRS is notoriously non-responsive by phone, but they are infamous about making unwelcome in-person visits. I’ll get to the bottom of this soon, and when I do send it to them, I’ll let them know that I never wanted “stimulus,” I just want my economy back.

[RichRaelianParticipant]

Hi! I hope nature regenerates itself after this terrible fire is put out.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Davis,

When you finish your Gish Gallop, read, watch, and learn. This will surpise you and others, as it did me on some aspects of giving:

Statistics on U.S. Generosity

Statistics on U.S. Generosity

And worst case scenario, even if the U.S. wasn’t the most generous and charitable nation on Earth. it’s investment into producing better goods and services at cheaper prices creates and gives jobs, makes Dollars go further, makes the quality of life better, and keeps people from having to rely upon charity in The first place.

Relax, life both is better and gets better than you might think.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 6 days ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendums

[DavisModerator]

The level of homelessness in your country is staggering and the amount of people left to fight for themselves and literally die in the gutter is depressing.

I never claimed people do not donate money. Nor have I claimed that people aren’t getting more generous over time. I am simply denying your ludicrous claim that donations from private people alone would sufficiently cover the basic needs of the downtrodden. That is one of the more ridiculous claims you’ve ever made.

Your own countries entire spending (both public and private) do not cover the basic needs of the homeless to begin with. Taxes going down and some rich people having more money will magically produce them donating money, specifically to effective organisations that accommodate the basic needs of the homeless? Where is your evidence this would happen? When ever, does lower taxes and withdrawing public programs result in more generous donations to effective programs? Show me evidence of this.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 6 days ago by  Davis.
• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 6 days ago by  Davis.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Davis,

Read the article. People donate more as the make more money and you cannot possibly dispute that people make more money when they are taxed less. What shocked me was seeing that individual donors, taken together, donate more than non-profit foundations.

Homes would be more plentiful for the working homeless if there were not minimum housing sizes and bans on multi-family units set by zoning regulations and building codes, or rent control, which gives developers less incentive to build more units and landlords less incentive to maintain units. Tariffs on raw building materials as well the costs of litigation also add to the costs of housing as well.

The War on (Some) Drugs has also contributed to skyrocketing the costs of drugs, which renders addicts unable to support both their habits and their dwellings.

None of this can be chalked up to Free Market Capitalism.

[DavisModerator]

Enco, that people with more disposable income give more “charitable” donations is not in dispute. That is obvious. Of course that would happen. Once again I ask you, please present evidence that this would, assuming we end public support of essential programs that would provide assistance to the most vulnerable to ensure their survival and most basic needs…that such donations would be donated to organisations that effectively helped people in “sufficiently” amoutns to cover their needs.

That people donate money is not in dispute. That having more income would lead to more charitable giving is not in dispute. Stop arguing with nobody. No one is questioning this. The question is when, ever, have people given charitable donations to effective organisations that handle the basic needs of vulnerable people (as opposed to say ineffective ones, or art museums or make a wish foundations or cancer research or scholarships) AND of those donations to effective organisations that help the vulnerable with their basic needs, donate in sufficient amounts that basic needs will be met (avoiding catastrophic and pointless suffering and death).

Your article doesn’t cover this. Show me evidence that this would magically happen if we were to end government programs (and baring in mind that in America government programs PLUS private donations combined don’t remotely address these needs).

You cannot, and I dare you to actually demonstrate this. I will happily concede I was wrong if you can. I am not holding my breath you will and expect you to go on some ridiculous tangent or try to divert our attention to another irrelevant point.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 5 days ago by  Davis.

[UnseenParticipant]

Why a black wall? Why can’t the power company say when they shut off the power? Where are the missing children?

There are conspiracy theories galore, but sometimes conspiracies turn out to be true.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Davis,

Private, voluntary charity works as far as the money and the application towards which it goes can work. And if a charity such as United Way spends on extravagant salaries and limosines of it’s head, then I and other thinking donors can and do cut them off.

Charities have to list with State Attorneys General the percentage of their expenditures used toward their stated beneficiaries and the percentage if any used towards pay of heads and employees. This also helps donors make that informed decision better as well.

This option, however, does not exist with government agencies who derive their revenues via coercive taxation. Taxpayers cannot pick and choose how their taxdollars are used and cannot without prosecution take their ball and go home.

And the United States has endured since the 1930s Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, Kennedy’s New Frontier, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and “War On Poverty,” all to the tune of Trillions of Dollars, with the poor and homeless still among us.

And you threw out a lot of qualifiers that don’t have measurable, quantifiable goalposts to address problems.

These problems also include homeless who are mentally ill or addicted and who consciously and willingly live on the streets and in trespassing encampments and avoid shelters that insist on civilized conduct towards other residents and staff. Problems like that no pay grade can “effectively” solve except piecemeal and night by night and eventually with jail cells. It eventually gets too monetarily, mentally, and emotionally exhausting and numbing for those who help to try.

Now if you’re finished with the cut-and-paste “Fuck-you-Jack-I’ve-got-mine” rhetoric from AlterNet and Counterpunch, so am I.

[DavisModerator]

Enco, that is an even worse cop-out I expected to come from you. Do you have absolutely no intellectual dignity? Are you utterly completely incapable of conceding a point or admitting you have, at the very minimum made too grandiose a claim?

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Davis,

Enco, that is an even worse cop-out I expected to come from you. Do you have absolutely no intellectual dignity? Are you utterly completely incapable of conceding a point or admitting you have, at the very minimum made too grandiose a claim?

My link and statements about charity and philanthropy in the U.S. are real.

My statements about the ineffectiveness of government social programs for the past 90+ years are real.

And my statements about the chronically homeless and your nebulous expectations for charity and government programs are real.

In the words of a real Jesus: “Real. Real. Real.” 😁

There is nothing cop-out-y or intellectually undignified or grandiose about being real.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 4 days ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Spacing and punctuation

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