3 ms·

So your telling me that churches are value for money? Could you give an example of one of these state welfare alternatives?

stormdennis 6y ago
St Vincent de Paul is the one I'm most familiar with. Time and again you hear accounts from people who were refused welfare for one reason or another and turned in despair to the SVP. They're not an alternative but they are invaluable to the people who fall through the cracks in society. They rely on donations from churchgoers and all are unpaid volunteers.
iateanapple 6y ago
> So your telling me that churches are value for money? Incredible value for money - 90% of the services provided by our local church are staffed by unpaid volunteers who go above and beyond.
cableshaft 6y ago
If it becomes a government service, it will instantly become a political target for budget cuts and regulations that will exclude people from getting help. As an example, I have someone in my extended family that works for one of the state governments for employment services, and from the stories they've told me about how the department has been slashed and burned and forced to work with a skeleton staff, I'm not surprised at all that when the pandemic hit that everyone was having a hell of a time signing up for unemployment or getting the money they're supposed to be getting, and desperately need right now, or even just reaching a live person to talk to. And of course that just makes the department look badly run, in people's eyes, which makes the average citizen even more likely to allow more money to be cut from them, because they just assume it's well funded already and "they suck at their jobs, what are we even paying their salaries with our tax dollars for? They should be fired!" Whereas churches have a bit of a shield from that, at least, especially from the GOP in the US, who aggressively and consistently fight against social programs and non-defense government services otherwise, but their voter-base tends to be very religious, so they have an incentive not to hurt churches in any way.

stormdennis 6y ago

St Vincent de Paul is the one I'm most familiar with. Time and again you hear accounts from people who were refused welfare for one reason or another and turned in despair to the SVP. They're not an alternative but they are invaluable to the people who fall through the cracks in society. They rely on donations from churchgoers and all are unpaid volunteers.

iateanapple 6y ago

> So your telling me that churches are value for money? Incredible value for money - 90% of the services provided by our local church are staffed by unpaid volunteers who go above and beyond.

cableshaft 6y ago

If it becomes a government service, it will instantly become a political target for budget cuts and regulations that will exclude people from getting help. As an example, I have someone in my extended family that works for one of the state governments for employment services, and from the stories they've told me about how the department has been slashed and burned and forced to work with a skeleton staff, I'm not surprised at all that when the pandemic hit that everyone was having a hell of a time signing up for unemployment or getting the money they're supposed to be getting, and desperately need right now, or even just reaching a live person to talk to. And of course that just makes the department look badly run, in people's eyes, which makes the average citizen even more likely to allow more money to be cut from them, because they just assume it's well funded already and "they suck at their jobs, what are we even paying their salaries with our tax dollars for? They should be fired!" Whereas churches have a bit of a shield from that, at least, especially from the GOP in the US, who aggressively and consistently fight against social programs and non-defense government services otherwise, but their voter-base tends to be very religious, so they have an incentive not to hurt churches in any way.