[rayiner]

Also, on a dollar per dollar basis, the government is vastly more efficient than nearly any charity. The Social Security Administration's overhead was 0.8-1.4% (depending on how you count) last year. Find me a private charity that efficient.

Make a Wish Foundation crows about spending 76% of funds on programs. If the SSA were as efficient as Make a Wish Foundation, it would have an overhead of an additional $185 billion a year (i.e. approximately equal to all federal payroll expenditures).

[kareemm]

The bulk of charitable spending is on programs and fundraising, usually in that order. The SSA doesn't have to worry about fundraising, hence the disparity in admin expenses.

[nazgulnarsil]

overhead is not the best measure of charity, QALYs saved is. If one charity has 50% overhead but saves 10 times the QALYs as one with 0% overhead you want the one with the overhead.

[danielweber]

Thank you.

The government probably has a worse QALY because it runs Medicare, but that's not the government's fault -- anyone who runs the medical care program for old people is going to have horrible numbers there.

(You are more likely to die if you are on Medicare than if you are uninsured. This isn't because Medicare is killing you, it's because old people are on Medicare.)

In addition, we'd have to examine marginal-QALY versus average-QALY. Depending on the question one or the other could be more important.

Americans freak out whenever anyone tries to do QALY measurements, so we don't know just how good (or bad) our various programs are, public or private.

[refurb]

What a ridiculous statement. Most of the charities' overhead is money spent on fundraising. The SSA doesn't have to fund raise since it's illegal to not pay into it.

[mikeash]

What's ridiculous? That seems like a compelling argument to forego fundraising in favor of taxes.