[api]

Something I’ve always noticed across the US political landscape: people really don’t like spending money to directly help people (mental health care, institutions, public housing, addiction recovery programs) but are fine with wasting money in weird ways like having this non profit travel the world to learn how to put up a sun shade.

It’s like the thing Americans dislike isn’t spending the money but the idea of helping the wrong sorts of people.

I’m sure that non profit was full of mostly white college graduates. Tossing money their way is fine even if it doesn’t accomplish much or anything. Let the addicts die on the street.

[mym1990]

The US political landscape does a great job of creating problems that then need an incredible amount of expenditure to address(not even to solve, just to plug holes). This can be seen in exponential rise of diabetes, the opioid crisis, and homelessness, just to name a few. No one wants to pay to prevent a problem from happening, but the system will gladly throw billions to “try to solve one”.

[aksss]

> directly help people

Indirect, I think you mean, and probably because people generally don’t trust their money to be spent well by institutions, and it’s not hard to figure out why.

Americans lead the world in charitable giving and much of that is more direct - anonymously giving money to help a church member or giving money to local charities both are avenues with more visible impact.

[pixl97]

It's not hard to figure out why, this is the Southern Strategy in action. After decades of dissolving institutions in the US and handing over the power to corporations we're finally getting our comeuppance.

[aksss]

> decades of dissolving institutions

Yet, mysteriously, after these many decades of dissolution the quantity of federal employees and spending in general has gotten higher and higher.

[Eumenes]

Idk if anyone is fine with those examples you mentioned. Unelected bureaucrats get to pick where this money goes. Also, not sure why you had to throw out race.

[Avshalom]

Even for the pettiest shit.

https://daily.jstor.org/when-cities-closed-pools-to-avoid-in...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_v._Thompson

[ryandrake]

Somehow, we Americans always prefer our government pay some entity to indirectly work towards a goal, than to simply use that money to directly achieve the goal. Direct action is so much more efficient, but we insist on doing it the worse way. Paying some non-profit, with executives, and PR people, and lobbyists, and administrators, and administrators-to-administrators, all soaking up the money that could have been applied directly if we weren't so stupid. Even for things that are not philanthropy. We're always insisting that government hire contractors to do this and that. Contractors whose executives and shareholders soak up much of the funding, who then turn around and hand the work to subcontractors with their own executives and shareholders and administrative staff, and sub-sub-contractors...it's grift and inefficiency all the way down. By the time a dollar gets from the government's hands through all the layers of money-sponges, only a cent or two go to the people who need it.

[api]

I think that may be a legacy of the Reagan era when the horrible inefficiency of government was roundly panned and there was a huge push to outsource everything to contractors and non-profits for the sake of “efficiency.”

[theGnuMe]

The US switched to direct cash block grants for low income folks. The program is called TANF. How you get that money however is left up to the states. Some use it to fund things like religious summer camps. If you read the following article you will see why.

Red states also introduced a lot of red tape under the guise of preventing fraud. It instead prevents qualified folks from getting the help they need!

https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/temporar...

[gavaw]

As the country gets more heterogeneous, people will want less to help others, as they know they won't be helping their own.