Reprinted from To The Point Analyses
Part I -- An Overdependence on Charity I have been watching my postal mail more closely than usual. Like most other people, I rarely get personal letters in the postal mail -- those having been shifted over to e-mail. So what is left to keep the United States Postal Service in business? It adds up to advertisements, the occasional bill and, most noticeably, non-stop charitable solicitations. My address has been receiving, on average, four such solicitations a day. Given our six-day delivery schedule, that makes 24 a week. That is over 1,200 solicitations a year. This is not atypical. What can such a deluge possibly mean?For one thing, it suggests that there are a wide array of community-related projects that are underfunded or simply not funded at all by public monies. These include various forms of medical research; local arts, including orchestras, theaters, and museums; parks and wildlife causes; animal shelters and rescue services; various sorts of poor-relief organizations such as the Salvation Army and Good Will; civil and human rights groups; women's shelters; and volunteer fire companies. The list seems endless.
In the U.S. this process of charitable solicitation has become a big business. There is an article in the 14 July 2016 New York Review of Books entitled "The Undermining of American Charity." According to the article, the "second most popular charity" in the U.S., in terms of donated dollars, is Fidelity Charitable, a branch of Fidelity Investments that acts as a "middleman" between "individual client accounts" and the charities they wish to support. Fidelity holds the money and, of course, "manages" it for profit until the clients instruct the firm how to distribute the funds.
Fidelity can also help the donor save on taxes by timing out donations. The charges and fees for all this make these "donor advised funds" money makers for "big finance." The authors of the NYRB essay don't like this turn of events. They feel that too much of the charitable funds are being "hoarded" by such institutions as Fidelity in order to maximize profits. Charities end up with less.
This conclusion is based on a commonsense social democratic point of view -- one that assumes that the collective (working through government) has a responsibility to support activities that reflect important community interests. This is, ultimately, one of the purposes of government. Most of the charities soliciting funds through the U.S. Mail would fit into this category of activities.
Part III -- A Perverse Philosophy It is significant that, in the U.S., reluctance to use government to own up to this responsibility is rationalized in the name of "freedom" from economic restraint and taxes. That is, the perverse American philosophy of radical individualism preaches that government should not be responsible for community needs beyond supporting the justice system, national defense and the enforcement of contracts. Everything else is the individual's responsibility. Such a scheme, at least in theory, gives the citizen the "right" to "get rich" as well as the "right" to endure a lifetime of poverty.(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).