[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...