Charities already enjoy the extreme generosity of tax exemption status. Governments in the last few decades have gotten into the habit of providing social services through subsidizing charities instead of building and maintaining properly funded government programs - it is a band aid approach that can open the door for corruption.
One of the reasons that governments like this approach is the funding is always temporary - like year by year contract stuff - so the workforce is always tenuous - and workers in the charity field are generally not paid the same kind of living wage that a real government employee would qualify to receive. Think of it as a small army of underpaid temp workers that supplement basic government programs on a temporary overflow basis.
Governments get used to having these surplus programs around - and use them as a crutch to patch broken parts of the social safety net instead of actually fixing broken social programs. For governments, it's just easier, and more politically expedient, to give the money to them.
For example - you have social programs that teach literacy, life skills, stuff like how to make a resume - etc - these programs are mainly aimed at compensating for the failure of the public school system to produce functionally literate graduates.
Either you pay enough to get the job done right on the front end, or you pay to clean up the mess on the back end.
Exactly eight years ago Friday, *Obama pledged an additional $6 billion for AmeriCorps, the government's 23-year-old civil society program that provides much-needed work on a number of fronts from coast to coast.
The program, created in September 1993 and launched in 1994 under former President Bill Clinton, offers full- and part-time opportunities for young Americans to perform valued services in various U.S. communities that might otherwise go ignored by overworked federal agencies. Three months after his inauguration, Obama submitted the cash as an effort to grow AmeriCorps' workforce from 75,000 to 250,000 by 2019.
The program, which relies on federal funding and private donations, addresses a multitude of needs across the United States -- including at-risk school children, public lands and waterways -- and engages more than 80,000 workers every year. It is often referred to as a domestic Peace Corps.
April 21, 2009 at 4:57 PM - Among other things, the act provides $6 billion in funding through 2010 for service organizations and expands AmeriCorps slots from 75,000 this year to 250,000 within the next decade, Obama said.
Let's do the math 6Billion / 75000 workers for 12 months =$80000 per employee. What exactly are they doing for that kinda money?
CrustyBeaver52 ago
Charities already enjoy the extreme generosity of tax exemption status. Governments in the last few decades have gotten into the habit of providing social services through subsidizing charities instead of building and maintaining properly funded government programs - it is a band aid approach that can open the door for corruption.
One of the reasons that governments like this approach is the funding is always temporary - like year by year contract stuff - so the workforce is always tenuous - and workers in the charity field are generally not paid the same kind of living wage that a real government employee would qualify to receive. Think of it as a small army of underpaid temp workers that supplement basic government programs on a temporary overflow basis.
Governments get used to having these surplus programs around - and use them as a crutch to patch broken parts of the social safety net instead of actually fixing broken social programs. For governments, it's just easier, and more politically expedient, to give the money to them.
For example - you have social programs that teach literacy, life skills, stuff like how to make a resume - etc - these programs are mainly aimed at compensating for the failure of the public school system to produce functionally literate graduates.
Either you pay enough to get the job done right on the front end, or you pay to clean up the mess on the back end.
voats4goats ago
So in other words, throwing good money after bad. Just like every other govt expenditure.
CrustyBeaver52 ago
Quite often, yes.
voats4goats ago
Certainly sounds noble
Lets go deeper
Let's do the math 6Billion / 75000 workers for 12 months =$80000 per employee. What exactly are they doing for that kinda money?
cattarhero ago
I'll tell you. They're training young people to be good leftist Democrats.
voats4goats ago
Could be payroll for AntiFa army ya never know.