This is my response to the the activities of the organization SaveChildrenNow.org. The intention of Save Children Now is to convince its visitors to support increased government action in feeding the starving children around the world by imposing a $30-$50 tax on people from wealthy nations. Low-income earners in a nation are exempt from the tax.
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Dear directors of Save Children Now,
I really appreciate your concern for the hurting and starving people of this world, and I want you to know that you are not alone in your passion for caring for these children. Millions of people around the world are deeply concerned about the suffering these children endure and are giving of their resources to make a difference. SaveChildrenNow is particularly effective in spreading the message to those who have not yet seen the faces of the hungry children and who have not yet been convicted of the incredible amount of good that can be done by aiding them.
I am curious about your statement that "saving children should never be based on donations". Do you mean I should not be giving voluntary donations to causes that feed these children, or do you mean that feeding the children should not be completely dependant on the voluntary donations of individuals? My intuition would say that what you really meant was that voluntary donations alone are insufficient and that some coercive action by governments is acceptable and necessary in order to really solve this problem. However, your advertisements state that you are not asking people for money to help the children, and the place on your website that does ask visitors for money states that the money is to be used to advertise the site rather than feed children. So, maybe my intuition here is incorrect and you really do dislike voluntary donations, preferring to focus all your efforts on convincing governments to solve the problem.
I, personally, think that the best (and only) way to really help these children is by voluntary donations. My reasoning here is based upon a deep distrust of the ability of governments to faithfully and efficiently distribute the funds to those in need. Let's look at some of the things that can go wrong when government gets involved. First of all, even if the nations of the world convince their leaders to institute this $30-$50 tax to feed the hungry, I am very skeptical that it would end up being used for those ends. For instance, Federal gas taxes in the
The history of government giving is almost always politically directed, and I don't know how that is going to suddenly change if this new tax is instituted. The politicians will still decide who gets the money based on political objectives rather than humanitarian ones. When private charities help the poor, they are held directly accountable by their donors by way of competition between charities. When a charity I am giving to is spending its funds inefficiently or using the money in ways I don't agree with, I can just give to a different charity. This is not possible with government spending. If the government's bloated bureaucracy consumes 70% of the funds, leaving only 30% to feed the hungry children, we have no recourse but to complain to our politicians or try to vote them out. And if we don't expect the alternative party to be any more efficient in its aid expenses, then we really have no way to fix the problem.
Also, notice that in order for this new tax to become law, it really needs to be supported by a majority of the voters of the country that will pass it. But, if we could convince half the voters of a nation that they should be giving $50 a year to feed the starving children, then we would already have an enormous amount of money going to feed the children because those people would already be giving voluntarily. The only benefit of passing a law and imposing the $50 tax on everyone would be to force the other half of the nation to contribute their $50 as well. So, the best we could hope for by passing the law would be a doubling of contributions. However, when we take into account that the efficiency of private charities is usually around 90% and the efficiency of government spending is significantly lower than that (sometimes approaching 10%) the expected doubling of revenue due to using the power of government disappears.
Now, it is certainly possible for half of the voters of a nation who have no intention of paying the tax (because they are low-income earners and exempted) to get a law passed that imposes this $50 tax on the other half of the population (the rich people). This is the only way I can see that using the coercive power of government would provide more funds than people acting voluntarily. So, the success of this plan depends upon large numbers of people, who have little intention of giving any money themselves, forcing another group of people to give to help the children. This, of course, perpetuates the centuries old tendency of people to look at the suffering in the world and ask "Why is no one doing anything?" while not lifting a finger themselves.
Other than the prospect of encouraging people to join the cause of SaveChildrenNow, secure in the fact that they will never be required to give anything themselves, I can find no reason to exempt low-income earners from the $50 tax. Even people living at the poverty level in Western nations still do better financially than about 70% of the population of the world. If it is acceptable to coerce the top 10% of the world's population to involuntarily aid the hungry children, why is it unacceptable to coerce the top 30% to do so?
The hope of millions of starving children does not lie with government solutions that will most likely never be implemented and that will be grossly inefficient and politically directed even if they are implemented. The hope of the children lies with ordinary people like us who are moved to give sacrificially of our own incomes to improve another person's life and to convince others to voluntarily do the same. The coercive hand of government has shown itself incapable of eliminating poverty even at the local level, and I see no reason for governments to do any better at the global level by us simply giving them more money.
The message of the starving children is one that needs to be shared, frequently and passionately, and I applaud SaveChildrenNow for its excellent efforts in convicting people of the severity of the problem. I would urge you, though, to follow in the footsteps of the hundreds of other organizations who are actively working to connect willing donors with needy children and who are making a real difference in the world.
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