“Adoption is not society’s consolation prize for threadbare safety nets; it is a child-centered option that ought to be presented clearly, fairly, and without pressure. The better metric is whether expectant parents can make an informed, non-coerced decision serving their best interests and that of their child.”
Incentives are NOT coercion. The welfare system incentivizes women to keep unwanted pregnancies and get married to the state who will reward the mother’s choice with a monthly payment for each child (this varies by state and doesn’t include other welfare benefits).
Why not have the adopting parents pay a fee to the birth mother—what could go wrong with that kind of incentive?!
PS—What supporters of welfare and its victims don’t seem to understand is that welfare is the cause of the poverty inertia. If the state keeps paying women to have babies they will.
No, incentives are coercion, just negative ones or at least they can be. I'll give you a real life example. I'm a felon, I'm factually actually innocent. The judge directed the prosecutor in open court to to offer me a plea of $50 fine, no jail, probation, and a felony conviction OR ten years closed no parole with a binding rule 11 (it's state, not Federal so no prohibition on judicial involvement) hence I was incentivized (from his and all the lawyers perspective) with no duress (according to the law) to accept the plea; in practice that coercive because who the hell would take a felony for a crime they didn't commit and not even try in court sans extreme sentence disparities? Likewise I'm currently on EBT/SNAP, if I work even fifteen minutes I'll make $15 and lose $750 hence I've being coerced to not work because I'm $14 under the threshold and it's all or none. Equally I'd like to work within my capabilities but I'm on disability and courts have a hard "thou shall work full time forty hours OR be on disability and work zero", nothing in between. So even though I'd like to work, even though I can work at some level, and even it would benefit society as I could get off EBT/SNAP, I'm being coerced (via the incentive of not losing my benefits) into not working because I'll lose more than I gain and risk prison on a technical if I get fired. Coercion is just negative incentives.
And no there is no meaningful correlation between welfare and poverty; poverty is often driven by government policy unrelated to welfare from employment restrictions to criminal records to drug prohibition to zoning. Whereas for example in Wisconsin, nearly all college kids, even upper middle class ones with a new Lexus, thousands a month in parental allowance (via a charge card in their parents name to skirt income rules), etc. qualify for welfare (EBT/SNAP + Quest healthcare) because as long as they don't work, they make under the income requirements and Wisconsin exempts students from the welfare work requirement. Yet nobody would meaningful say the trust fund kid with a house in the Hamptons vacationing in Europe a couple times a year attending Marquette is in poverty simply because they don't work and are on welfare.
On "Why not have the adopting parents pay a fee to the birth mother—what could go wrong with that kind of incentive?!" .. literally nothing. The birth mother wins (increased income), the kid wins (they are alive), and the receiving family wins (they have a kid); it's irrelevant if she's a baby factory as nobody loses here.
Coercion is simply shorthand for negative incentives, what exactly do you think coercion is? Yes the word disincentive exists, it’s a spectrum with coercion on the far tail and disincentive on the near.
And if you are talking my example, no. If not for the welfare system I would starve because the courts have ordered me not to work. That’s not a welfare system problem, that is the a criminal justice system problem which feels it’s number one priority for any convicted crime, no matter how small or even if the person is innocent, is punitive; at least in my state. When our criminal justice system moves beyond the early 20th century, because it is still trapped in the failed ideology of the Progressive Era and earlier English Protestantism, like so many other failed government programs, get back to me.
And there is no welfare trap in in the normative case, anybody that feels that I believe needs to spend more time around the poor. Sure there are freeloaders but that is primarily because the system is generally deigned for prevent type 1 errors, not type 2, as it should, i.e. error on the side of granting benefits, not rejecting them. The alternative to the welfare trap as you all like to think isn’t people will magically go work, it is increased social unrest, crime, and violence. Most people on welfare are working at their maximum capacity within their life limitations, at least of the sort that are required to work. A meth head can’t work regardless how aspirational you want to wish they can, they simply can’t focus, show up on time, etc. As that old saying says “If their life is so good, walk a mile in their shoes and get back to us”. IMHO the pushback against welfare, and I’ve come to this belief in the past ten years, is purely one of spite and petty jealousy, i.e. neo-Puritanism.
“And there is no welfare trap in in the normative case…”
I will stop making any reference at all your case.
But your claim of no welfare trap is not credible because the extremely high marginal tax rates on work - in many cases over 70%, in some cases over 100% - are in fact massive disincentives to work.
Said marginal tax rates on earning additional income from employment are NOT coercive, but they indeed have very substantial effects, because incentives and disincentives indeed matter.
But they are still not coercion. I will acknowledge they can have similar effects as coercion, but they are not the same thing.
In the analogous way that a heavy stone, a knife and a gun can all be used to kill someone, but they are not the same things.
I'm lost how they aren't coercive in nature in your belief. If the negative incentives are strong enough that I don't work out of fear of losing my benefits, that is coercion in fact as that threat is coercing me to not work.
I get what you are saying an strict pedantic sense BUT I also think context matters. If we are having a conversation about murder and the metric is "people murdered", a knife, heavy stone, and gun are all the same thing in that context. It's that old tired argument "to a murdered person, it's irrelevant what tool was used to kill me". It's why arguments about guns are generally disingenuous I find because because substitution affects are real hence if the concern is lowering murder rates, guns are irrelevant. TBH I also find the murder rate itself is disingenuous because we don't included attempts and as a result, much of the falling murder rate has nothing to do with society getting same but more medical science in trauma have gotten better.
I can meet you part of the way by acknowledging that very large negative incentives are close to indistinguishable from coercion, and the difference at that point is minimal.
Hopefully you can see that lesser negative incentives, however, are not coercion.
If you want to call that pedantry, so be it. But I still think words mean things. Minor and even moderate disincentives (negative incentives) are not coercion.
“Ordinary” large ones like 70%+ marginal tax rates are perhaps coercion-adjacent, but still not coercion. But if we only disagree on this point but agree on the rest, that’s fine.
As a point in my favor, perhaps you will acknowledge that the 70%+ marginal tax rates on the rich prior to Reagan were not “coercion” and in fact some rich people continued to work hard despite those very high marginal rates (just not nearly as many as when rates were lowered).
Incentives matter—this may not be an actual economic law but it’s still true. Now, as a good economist and mentor once said, it is fair for an economist to give an opinion on what will happen if you set up certain kinds of incentives (rent control, minimum wages, plea bargaining, etc.), but not to comment on whether the predicted results are good or bad—that’s a normative judgment and the domain of ethicists and philosophers (and free individuals too!).
“And no there is no meaningful correlation between welfare and poverty; poverty is often driven by government policy unrelated to welfare from employment restrictions to criminal records to drug prohibition to zoning.”
Everything you mention above is some form of government intervention, which each artificially create new incentives that we can evaluate and predict will cause an effect based on human action. Whether you and I agree on the normative value of that effect is irrelevant. Better outcomes demand better actions on the part of individuals. This cannot possibly happen when the state controls every aspect of our lives.
More welfare encourages people to remain as they are: eligible (for whatever reason) to receive welfare benefits.
In the case of criminal “justice,” when the government offers a plea in lieu of either an expensive defense (in most cases but not all) and the risk of substantial prison time, most defendants take the plea deals (see Michael Huemer’s Justice before the Law for the most comprehensive discussion of this issue and its implications for real justice).
As for my thoughts on mothers becoming baby factories, I am agnostic because that’s none of my business. I defend any person’s right to live as they choose as long as they don’t infringe on my liberty.
PS—A final word on poverty seems necessary. I don’t know what causes poverty in every case. But I do know that government is not the solution. Before there was a welfare state there were many private charitable groups (and there still are many private charities) available for people and families in need.
I think we are talking past each other my friend, you are trying to defend a point I didn't make, i.e. you are claiming incentives can't be coercion and while sure that is strictly true in a pedantic autistic way, it's about as useful conversationally as holding the line a tomato is a fruit when discussing what vegetables you want on your sandwich. Coercion is the application of negative incentives hence yes, practically speaking incentives can be coercion contrary to your claim which was MY point. Not a philosophical debate about libertarian ideals and public policy. But sure I will concede incentives are morally agnostic if that really is the hill you are trying to die on here.
Nobody is claiming anywhere, sans rare people that worship determinism, incentives don't matter for normative individuals hence the statement is a non sequitur.
I think where we went wrong here is I read your statement "Why not have the adopting parents pay a fee to the birth mother—what could go wrong with that kind of incentive?!" as rhetorical sarcasm, not an actual inquiry.
"What supporters of welfare and its victims don’t seem to understand is that welfare is the cause of the poverty inertia."
No it's really not, poverty has long existed and well before welfare has. In fact poverty has been dropping as welfare has increased worldwide, there is a direct correlation between increased welfare and lower poverty. Nor are welfare recipients "victims" outside some niche edge cases that are irrelevant in the aggregate. Upper middle class students going to an upper tier private liberal arts school in Wisconsin collecting welfare (EBT) are not victim of welfare; because EBT is offered to all college students in Wisconsin that don't work basically and there is no work requirement for students. The disabled blind quadriplegic living off disability in hospice is not a victim of welfare. And in fact most people in poverty don't even qualify for welfare because they either make too much (hence welfare doesn't life them out of poverty) or they don't qualify for whatever reason (usually though it's because they can't work). Welfare is basically a redistribution mechanism from the upper middle class to the upper working class generally speaking; if there are any "victims" in that system it's the poor who don't generally qualify for welfare.
And of course government is the solution if your goal is the help the vulnerable and weakest members of society, something not even our own welfare system does. You speak of "times past" but you haven't did the leg work on that, times past put you out to die in forest if you had ALS and no family. "Times past" had indentured servitude requirements to even receive private charity. "Times past" let poor people work in profitable, but untasteful, jobs like sex work, child labor, etc. Crime was rampant as people needed to it and sleep somewhere, etc. Historically private charity was for ones family and immediate peers who feel on hard time with the occasionally special interest groups for orphanages (who generally funded their services with child outsourced labor and child prostitution), etc. Charities even today are highly selective in who they give too, there is no private charity out there giving $50K a year to sex offender felons who got out of prison and now do meth daily with no strings and are willing to keep up that support for decades, even if the MAY give a one time boon so they can maintain a lifestyle outside poverty and not revert to violent crime.
And that's in Christendom though Islam tends to do better with private charity. You get out East or in Asian predominant parts of the US and you know, even kids would starve, they have a culture that is outright hostile to charity period. Hence yeah, you need taxation if you to keep social unrest and crime down (if you are selfish) or just have empathy (if you care). Government welfare is the bribe rich nations pay the lower middle class to prevent revolutions.
No offense man but you obviously have no practical experience with welfare, poverty, private charity, etc. You are talking talking points without realizing how it's execute in practice.
I am satisfied with my response but I will address your claim that there’s a positive correlation between poverty and welfare. That is probably true because there’s also a positive correlation between increased GDP/GNP and increased welfare benefits. Nevertheless, the net decrease in global poverty is due to sustained economic growth which does contribute to increased welfare spending.
PS—I not only know how welfare benefits work in practice, I have firsthand experience with my family. I know all about the welfare system. I’m glad you are benefiting from those services but your arguments against private charities are flawed. Whenever government enters into a domain with “programs” or “services” it crowds out private alternatives (e.g., healthcare, education, utilities, charities,etc.)
Crowding out is fine in a market failure because there is nothing to crowd out in practice. Once again, look at poverty pre the Progressive Era, private charity wasn't cutting it. Orphanages were pimping out their female children to pay the bills while sending the male children off to work as chimney sweeps and other dangerous jobs. The undesirable dredges were often left to die or simply hung. The "solution" for destitute infants was mass graves as you can see outside nunneries across Europe and America.
Private charities are beholden to their doners, the same as today hence they only support the "cool" poor; what the government provides is a floor for everyone which is why we don't have the mass unrest of yesterday. And like I said, you have cultures that simply don't believe in non-familiar charity period hence don't have a safetynet beyond prison and crime. Also sorry, I don't think your family was abject poor or, even if they were, have you spent decades working in homeless shelters, drug outreach, sex offender camps, etc. Once again, there simply is no charity out there that is willing to fund an acceptable lifestyle for the forty year old child rapist who does meth every day and that's what he plans to do until he dies thirty year hence. Private charity fails with unsympathetic clients. It's why the ACLU, PPFA, or the Innocent Project doesn't help white straight men. Catholic Charities, the largest charity in the US for poor, refuses to help sex offenders, etc etc. Nobody is helping the schizophrenic black man running down the street naked sleeping in his own piss, I know because he lives outside my house and has for ten years on the sidewalk.
I'm not a giant fan of government here but one of it's core functions, even in minimarch state, is a floor of human welfare. That or we simply decriminalize all labor regulation, go free market, and legalize port natal abortions.
Adopting foreign babies seems like a great way to get more immigration.
“Adoption is not society’s consolation prize for threadbare safety nets; it is a child-centered option that ought to be presented clearly, fairly, and without pressure. The better metric is whether expectant parents can make an informed, non-coerced decision serving their best interests and that of their child.”
Incentives are NOT coercion. The welfare system incentivizes women to keep unwanted pregnancies and get married to the state who will reward the mother’s choice with a monthly payment for each child (this varies by state and doesn’t include other welfare benefits).
Why not have the adopting parents pay a fee to the birth mother—what could go wrong with that kind of incentive?!
PS—What supporters of welfare and its victims don’t seem to understand is that welfare is the cause of the poverty inertia. If the state keeps paying women to have babies they will.
No, incentives are coercion, just negative ones or at least they can be. I'll give you a real life example. I'm a felon, I'm factually actually innocent. The judge directed the prosecutor in open court to to offer me a plea of $50 fine, no jail, probation, and a felony conviction OR ten years closed no parole with a binding rule 11 (it's state, not Federal so no prohibition on judicial involvement) hence I was incentivized (from his and all the lawyers perspective) with no duress (according to the law) to accept the plea; in practice that coercive because who the hell would take a felony for a crime they didn't commit and not even try in court sans extreme sentence disparities? Likewise I'm currently on EBT/SNAP, if I work even fifteen minutes I'll make $15 and lose $750 hence I've being coerced to not work because I'm $14 under the threshold and it's all or none. Equally I'd like to work within my capabilities but I'm on disability and courts have a hard "thou shall work full time forty hours OR be on disability and work zero", nothing in between. So even though I'd like to work, even though I can work at some level, and even it would benefit society as I could get off EBT/SNAP, I'm being coerced (via the incentive of not losing my benefits) into not working because I'll lose more than I gain and risk prison on a technical if I get fired. Coercion is just negative incentives.
And no there is no meaningful correlation between welfare and poverty; poverty is often driven by government policy unrelated to welfare from employment restrictions to criminal records to drug prohibition to zoning. Whereas for example in Wisconsin, nearly all college kids, even upper middle class ones with a new Lexus, thousands a month in parental allowance (via a charge card in their parents name to skirt income rules), etc. qualify for welfare (EBT/SNAP + Quest healthcare) because as long as they don't work, they make under the income requirements and Wisconsin exempts students from the welfare work requirement. Yet nobody would meaningful say the trust fund kid with a house in the Hamptons vacationing in Europe a couple times a year attending Marquette is in poverty simply because they don't work and are on welfare.
On "Why not have the adopting parents pay a fee to the birth mother—what could go wrong with that kind of incentive?!" .. literally nothing. The birth mother wins (increased income), the kid wins (they are alive), and the receiving family wins (they have a kid); it's irrelevant if she's a baby factory as nobody loses here.
“No, incentives are coercion”
This is Orwellian.
Incentives are not coercion.
Coercion is coercion.
Words mean things.
It is indeed a sad thing - and perfect example of the welfare trap - that our welfare plus tax system gives you such incredible disincentives to work.
Coercion is simply shorthand for negative incentives, what exactly do you think coercion is? Yes the word disincentive exists, it’s a spectrum with coercion on the far tail and disincentive on the near.
And if you are talking my example, no. If not for the welfare system I would starve because the courts have ordered me not to work. That’s not a welfare system problem, that is the a criminal justice system problem which feels it’s number one priority for any convicted crime, no matter how small or even if the person is innocent, is punitive; at least in my state. When our criminal justice system moves beyond the early 20th century, because it is still trapped in the failed ideology of the Progressive Era and earlier English Protestantism, like so many other failed government programs, get back to me.
And there is no welfare trap in in the normative case, anybody that feels that I believe needs to spend more time around the poor. Sure there are freeloaders but that is primarily because the system is generally deigned for prevent type 1 errors, not type 2, as it should, i.e. error on the side of granting benefits, not rejecting them. The alternative to the welfare trap as you all like to think isn’t people will magically go work, it is increased social unrest, crime, and violence. Most people on welfare are working at their maximum capacity within their life limitations, at least of the sort that are required to work. A meth head can’t work regardless how aspirational you want to wish they can, they simply can’t focus, show up on time, etc. As that old saying says “If their life is so good, walk a mile in their shoes and get back to us”. IMHO the pushback against welfare, and I’ve come to this belief in the past ten years, is purely one of spite and petty jealousy, i.e. neo-Puritanism.
“And there is no welfare trap in in the normative case…”
I will stop making any reference at all your case.
But your claim of no welfare trap is not credible because the extremely high marginal tax rates on work - in many cases over 70%, in some cases over 100% - are in fact massive disincentives to work.
Said marginal tax rates on earning additional income from employment are NOT coercive, but they indeed have very substantial effects, because incentives and disincentives indeed matter.
But they are still not coercion. I will acknowledge they can have similar effects as coercion, but they are not the same thing.
In the analogous way that a heavy stone, a knife and a gun can all be used to kill someone, but they are not the same things.
I'm lost how they aren't coercive in nature in your belief. If the negative incentives are strong enough that I don't work out of fear of losing my benefits, that is coercion in fact as that threat is coercing me to not work.
I get what you are saying an strict pedantic sense BUT I also think context matters. If we are having a conversation about murder and the metric is "people murdered", a knife, heavy stone, and gun are all the same thing in that context. It's that old tired argument "to a murdered person, it's irrelevant what tool was used to kill me". It's why arguments about guns are generally disingenuous I find because because substitution affects are real hence if the concern is lowering murder rates, guns are irrelevant. TBH I also find the murder rate itself is disingenuous because we don't included attempts and as a result, much of the falling murder rate has nothing to do with society getting same but more medical science in trauma have gotten better.
I can meet you part of the way by acknowledging that very large negative incentives are close to indistinguishable from coercion, and the difference at that point is minimal.
Hopefully you can see that lesser negative incentives, however, are not coercion.
If you want to call that pedantry, so be it. But I still think words mean things. Minor and even moderate disincentives (negative incentives) are not coercion.
“Ordinary” large ones like 70%+ marginal tax rates are perhaps coercion-adjacent, but still not coercion. But if we only disagree on this point but agree on the rest, that’s fine.
As a point in my favor, perhaps you will acknowledge that the 70%+ marginal tax rates on the rich prior to Reagan were not “coercion” and in fact some rich people continued to work hard despite those very high marginal rates (just not nearly as many as when rates were lowered).
Incentives matter—this may not be an actual economic law but it’s still true. Now, as a good economist and mentor once said, it is fair for an economist to give an opinion on what will happen if you set up certain kinds of incentives (rent control, minimum wages, plea bargaining, etc.), but not to comment on whether the predicted results are good or bad—that’s a normative judgment and the domain of ethicists and philosophers (and free individuals too!).
“And no there is no meaningful correlation between welfare and poverty; poverty is often driven by government policy unrelated to welfare from employment restrictions to criminal records to drug prohibition to zoning.”
Everything you mention above is some form of government intervention, which each artificially create new incentives that we can evaluate and predict will cause an effect based on human action. Whether you and I agree on the normative value of that effect is irrelevant. Better outcomes demand better actions on the part of individuals. This cannot possibly happen when the state controls every aspect of our lives.
More welfare encourages people to remain as they are: eligible (for whatever reason) to receive welfare benefits.
In the case of criminal “justice,” when the government offers a plea in lieu of either an expensive defense (in most cases but not all) and the risk of substantial prison time, most defendants take the plea deals (see Michael Huemer’s Justice before the Law for the most comprehensive discussion of this issue and its implications for real justice).
As for my thoughts on mothers becoming baby factories, I am agnostic because that’s none of my business. I defend any person’s right to live as they choose as long as they don’t infringe on my liberty.
PS—A final word on poverty seems necessary. I don’t know what causes poverty in every case. But I do know that government is not the solution. Before there was a welfare state there were many private charitable groups (and there still are many private charities) available for people and families in need.
I think we are talking past each other my friend, you are trying to defend a point I didn't make, i.e. you are claiming incentives can't be coercion and while sure that is strictly true in a pedantic autistic way, it's about as useful conversationally as holding the line a tomato is a fruit when discussing what vegetables you want on your sandwich. Coercion is the application of negative incentives hence yes, practically speaking incentives can be coercion contrary to your claim which was MY point. Not a philosophical debate about libertarian ideals and public policy. But sure I will concede incentives are morally agnostic if that really is the hill you are trying to die on here.
Nobody is claiming anywhere, sans rare people that worship determinism, incentives don't matter for normative individuals hence the statement is a non sequitur.
I think where we went wrong here is I read your statement "Why not have the adopting parents pay a fee to the birth mother—what could go wrong with that kind of incentive?!" as rhetorical sarcasm, not an actual inquiry.
"What supporters of welfare and its victims don’t seem to understand is that welfare is the cause of the poverty inertia."
No it's really not, poverty has long existed and well before welfare has. In fact poverty has been dropping as welfare has increased worldwide, there is a direct correlation between increased welfare and lower poverty. Nor are welfare recipients "victims" outside some niche edge cases that are irrelevant in the aggregate. Upper middle class students going to an upper tier private liberal arts school in Wisconsin collecting welfare (EBT) are not victim of welfare; because EBT is offered to all college students in Wisconsin that don't work basically and there is no work requirement for students. The disabled blind quadriplegic living off disability in hospice is not a victim of welfare. And in fact most people in poverty don't even qualify for welfare because they either make too much (hence welfare doesn't life them out of poverty) or they don't qualify for whatever reason (usually though it's because they can't work). Welfare is basically a redistribution mechanism from the upper middle class to the upper working class generally speaking; if there are any "victims" in that system it's the poor who don't generally qualify for welfare.
And of course government is the solution if your goal is the help the vulnerable and weakest members of society, something not even our own welfare system does. You speak of "times past" but you haven't did the leg work on that, times past put you out to die in forest if you had ALS and no family. "Times past" had indentured servitude requirements to even receive private charity. "Times past" let poor people work in profitable, but untasteful, jobs like sex work, child labor, etc. Crime was rampant as people needed to it and sleep somewhere, etc. Historically private charity was for ones family and immediate peers who feel on hard time with the occasionally special interest groups for orphanages (who generally funded their services with child outsourced labor and child prostitution), etc. Charities even today are highly selective in who they give too, there is no private charity out there giving $50K a year to sex offender felons who got out of prison and now do meth daily with no strings and are willing to keep up that support for decades, even if the MAY give a one time boon so they can maintain a lifestyle outside poverty and not revert to violent crime.
And that's in Christendom though Islam tends to do better with private charity. You get out East or in Asian predominant parts of the US and you know, even kids would starve, they have a culture that is outright hostile to charity period. Hence yeah, you need taxation if you to keep social unrest and crime down (if you are selfish) or just have empathy (if you care). Government welfare is the bribe rich nations pay the lower middle class to prevent revolutions.
No offense man but you obviously have no practical experience with welfare, poverty, private charity, etc. You are talking talking points without realizing how it's execute in practice.
I am satisfied with my response but I will address your claim that there’s a positive correlation between poverty and welfare. That is probably true because there’s also a positive correlation between increased GDP/GNP and increased welfare benefits. Nevertheless, the net decrease in global poverty is due to sustained economic growth which does contribute to increased welfare spending.
PS—I not only know how welfare benefits work in practice, I have firsthand experience with my family. I know all about the welfare system. I’m glad you are benefiting from those services but your arguments against private charities are flawed. Whenever government enters into a domain with “programs” or “services” it crowds out private alternatives (e.g., healthcare, education, utilities, charities,etc.)
Crowding out is fine in a market failure because there is nothing to crowd out in practice. Once again, look at poverty pre the Progressive Era, private charity wasn't cutting it. Orphanages were pimping out their female children to pay the bills while sending the male children off to work as chimney sweeps and other dangerous jobs. The undesirable dredges were often left to die or simply hung. The "solution" for destitute infants was mass graves as you can see outside nunneries across Europe and America.
Not saying this is a gold standard here, but Townsend did a great episode on colonial welfare and it's pretty atrocious, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJiPehLzhUE
Private charities are beholden to their doners, the same as today hence they only support the "cool" poor; what the government provides is a floor for everyone which is why we don't have the mass unrest of yesterday. And like I said, you have cultures that simply don't believe in non-familiar charity period hence don't have a safetynet beyond prison and crime. Also sorry, I don't think your family was abject poor or, even if they were, have you spent decades working in homeless shelters, drug outreach, sex offender camps, etc. Once again, there simply is no charity out there that is willing to fund an acceptable lifestyle for the forty year old child rapist who does meth every day and that's what he plans to do until he dies thirty year hence. Private charity fails with unsympathetic clients. It's why the ACLU, PPFA, or the Innocent Project doesn't help white straight men. Catholic Charities, the largest charity in the US for poor, refuses to help sex offenders, etc etc. Nobody is helping the schizophrenic black man running down the street naked sleeping in his own piss, I know because he lives outside my house and has for ten years on the sidewalk.
I'm not a giant fan of government here but one of it's core functions, even in minimarch state, is a floor of human welfare. That or we simply decriminalize all labor regulation, go free market, and legalize port natal abortions.