Helping Jose

Incredibly, I am with the Gipper.
We are Americans, the cheated and robbed from people in Honduras are generally natives or Hondurans....and on and on..What we should do is have no diplomatic relations with these nations until they clean up their act....
NO more huts and palaces side by side...We messed up these places, yes, we !
There families had to be large, just in order to survive, most children would die, only the strongest/luckiest would survive to reproduce...so we had to interfere and assure that most of the children would live....and create an overpopulation problem..
So why perpetuate the problem with "charity"..
IMO, these people are better off when left alone..

notquiteright said:

Ummm your hubris or ignorance is showing.... all of the 'New World' is American- North, Central, South. While few outside of the United States refer to themselves as Americans they are in fact just that.

You most likely meant Citizens of the United States, or here in this country...

IF is a mighty big word, do you actually give to charity to feed hungry kids? Or just typing... eace

Click to expand...

Gipper said:

Umm...wouldn't work well since charity has a very low %AGI cap. Also, if you make obviously fraudulent claims on Schedule A deductions, you can expect a call. If you claim more than 500 dollars in charity, an audit is probable. I'm waiting to be judged on my "silliness" now.

Click to expand...

you make a fraudulent claim and you can expect a call???? Really? given the reduced IRS staffs I'd say most fraud passes right on by. Congressman Cunningham lived like a baron on his military retirement and congressional paycheck for years before any 'call'.

I know quite a few small businesses who get great PR and a good write-off by donating prizes to charity raffles, and such. Many who redecorate their homes get sweet write-offs for the cast-off furnishings. lots of slop factor there.

I'm not saying you get Trump rich donating cast-offs and getting free PR in raffles, but millions of small businesses and upper middle class folks doing this adds up.

Odd thing, I have made several rather large deductions to include the vehicle for druggies program....

I am still waiting for my phonecall... eace

notquiteright said:

you make a fraudulent claim and you can expect a call???? Really? given the reduced IRS staffs I'd say most fraud passes right on by. Congressman Cunningham lived like a baron on his military retirement and congressional paycheck for years before any 'call'.

I know quite a few small businesses who get great PR and a good write-off by donating prizes to charity raffles, and such. Many who redecorate their homes get sweet write-offs for the cast-off furnishings. lots of slop factor there.

I'm not saying you get Trump rich donating cast-offs and getting free PR in raffles, but millions of small businesses and upper middle class folks doing this adds up.

Odd thing, I have made several rather large deductions to include the vehicle for druggies program....

I am still waiting for my phonecall... eace

Click to expand...

Last I checked, the average Schedule C business has about a 4% chance to get audited. Now, they raise their likelihood to get audited if they fail a few red flag tests, but just because you snuck past a formerly comatose IRS doesn't mean that you're immune. You may never get the phone call, or you may and then they'll get pissed enough to crawl up your ass to the tune of 7 years of back taxes. If it's worth it to you, that's fine.

sawyerloggingon said:

You have probably seen these commercials to help some poor kid in South America where they claim just a dollar a day will change a child's life. It tugged at my heart strings so I called for more info. They sent me a bio of this kid from a very poor family with eight kids. They said that if I helped feed him he could grow up to someday have a family of his own. It occurred to me that all I was doing by helping little Jose was enabling a culture that has to many kids per family too even feed. They need to learn to live within their means and by giving Jose money I was just helping to perpetuate a culture that needs to change. Give Jose money so he can grow up and have more kids than he can feed? WTF is that about. Anyway I didn't join the charity. So I wonder how others here feel, are you helping or hurting when you sign up for this program.

Click to expand...

The kid gets maybe five cents of every dollar, and the rest goes to Susan Sarandon and that guy who looks like the old man from Jurassic Park. Gotta fund those trips to third world countries so they can guilt others into forking over some cash.

Lutherf said:

A few decades ago I ended up in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. As I was driving into town I saw a huge white building on a hilltop which was the presidential palace. To my right, on a hillside adjacent to the highway, were hundreds of people living under scraps of plywood or tarps. Most of the kids were naked and there was a dead horse at the bottom of the hill. I'd never seen that kind of poverty before and it was striking. As time went by I noticed that in most of the towns the majority of people lived in what was no more than a stable...kind of a row house with one room apartments and dirt floors. The men worked in the fields and the women made hammocks from kits that got distributed as some kid of economic incentive. The kids sold the hammocks or pimped their sisters.

The land owners sold their crops and paid the elected officials who turned the other way when claims of abuse were presented and the cops would beat anyone who complained and then steal whatever money they had....unless they were a drug dealer or whore monger in which case they would be "enforcers".

There is no charitable organization that is going to be able to fix that. Not for a dollar and not for a million dollars.

Click to expand...

Pretty much the same thing, at varying levels, in Thailand, Philippines, Panama, Saudi Arabia, and a few other places I've been to. Ok, in Saudi, they weren't whoring out the women, but other things were happening. And for those who think it doesn't happen in the US, it does, in at least one of our territories, Puerto Rico.

But what can we do to help? Other than forcing the governments to change, not much. It is kind of like welfare. If you only give without setting up a system that allows and requires people to actually improve themselves, all you create is dependence, not independence. Unless we are willing to take the steps to change the systems these people live under, nothing will change for them. Unfortunately, I don't see us doing that or even being the right people to do it anymore as we are slowly changing into their type of system, a system of dependence, and moving away from individual independence ourselves.

Yes, it is hard to see those pictures and not feel something. But you do not really help with most of these types organizations.

What we can do is learn from them though. These children are the products of closed "protectionist" economic systems, Socialism and generally bad governments that thrive/require the dependence of the masses. Then look at some of the policies being pursued here and how they create a culture of dependence upon the government. The route we are currently traveling, your grandchildren or great-grandchildren are going to be the ones in those videos for advertisements elsewhere.

I think the focus needs to change from politics in this thread. No, your donation won't turn an impoverished third world country into a hyper-capitalist money making powerhouse. That's not the point. The point is to alleviate suffering, when their own governments can't or won't do anything about it.

Preventing a child from starving to death is worth it. Preventing a child from going blind from vitamin deficiency is worth it. Preventing a child from walking with a permanent limp by providing sterile bandages and antibiotics when they get injured is worth it.

Dithering about how much the charity directors are making is an excuse to do nothing.

sawyerloggingon said:

You have probably seen these commercials to help some poor kid in South America where they claim just a dollar a day will change a child's life. It tugged at my heart strings so I called for more info. They sent me a bio of this kid from a very poor family with eight kids. They said that if I helped feed him he could grow up to someday have a family of his own. It occurred to me that all I was doing by helping little Jose was enabling a culture that has to many kids per family too even feed. They need to learn to live within their means and by giving Jose money I was just helping to perpetuate a culture that needs to change. Give Jose money so he can grow up and have more kids than he can feed? WTF is that about. Anyway I didn't join the charity. So I wonder how others here feel, are you helping or hurting when you sign up for this program.

Click to expand...

This post is emblematic of the worst sentiments of the anti-humanist/population control movement that Paul Ehrlich kick-started. It was wrong and immoral then, and it is wrong and immoral today.

I'd rather people direct their donations to providing loans for these people.
Kiva is a good place to start.

Instead of giving a hand out, it gives an opportunity.
Kiva - Loans that change lives

sawyerloggingon said:

OK so that made me LMAO! :lol:

Click to expand...

Yeah, it comes from the Rodney Dangerfield 3rd Annual Young Comedians Special, which unfortunately has never been put out on DVD. That's some great classic Kinnison.

You don't have to worry that your money will cause stick figure Jose to be a fat little breeder. the Better Business Bureau has determined that only 10 cents of every dollar you send actually gets to Jose'. Do you really think you can change his life for less than the cost of a cup of coffee? LHSMSFOAIDMT (laughing so hard my sombrero fell off and I dropped my taco ) Even presuming that an American dollar is worth ten Venezuelan dollars, you're buying him less than a cup of coffee, not a pile of clean clothes, a month's supply of food for a family of 8, and an education sufficiently superior that he can land a high-paying job!

As a rule. I only give to charities or join causes that operate in my country, preferable, in my city. There are a lot of needy people where I live. How can I be expected to help a citizen across the world when I can give a helping hand to a citizen across the street.

In order to be a good man and find happiness, you must first ensure you and yours are well, then your friends, then your neighbors, then the street you live on, then the city, then the country, etc. When there is still trouble where you live, you can't be expected to venture to places you know nothing about and with people you know nothing of.

ttwtt78640 said:

There needs to be a law passed that defines net money spent on the advertised purpose of each "charity" per dollar of gross donations recieved.

Click to expand...

And you call yourself a libertarian?

What if, by spending a higher percentage of each dollar they receive on advertising, the charity is actually able to collect a greater net sum of funds that can be delivered to their beneficiaries?

the_recruit said:

And you call yourself a libertarian?

What if, by spending a higher percentage of each dollar they receive on advertising, the charity is actually able to collect a greater net sum of funds that can be delivered to their beneficiaries?

Click to expand...

There comes a point when charities are like unions, they enrich themselves under the guise of helping others.

sawyerloggingon said:

There comes a point when charities are like unions, they enrich themselves under the guise of helping others.

Click to expand...

So some full time employees of large charities actually earn a living working for the charity? Oh no!

Look man. Do what you want with your money. Give it to a charity. Or not. As you said in the OP, it's probably better that Jose doesn't get your money anyway because he's just going to contribute to the overpopulation problem. It's probably better he starve. :roll: