partial_accumen

Many food banks around the country are turning people away after running out of food. In that kind of context, I think $100 to the food bank likely does more good than $100 directly to individuals.

I know I’ve posted this at least 3 times now: My local food bank won’t accept cash donations

If I have $500 to donate, giving 25 people $20 each is gonna take a bunch of overhead in the searching and matching. Plus the logistics of actually being in the same place at the same time to hand over cash.

It look me less than 30 minutes to hand out $400 with $20 to a car to those in line at the food bank. Another time it did take a bit longer at about 40 minutes. Another time yet, it was again about 30 minutes. It was after the third time the food bank asked me to stop giving out cash to those in line. I respect their mission so I stopped. I’m looking for more ways to give directly. For a newly divorced mother of two small children I bought an old car and fixed it up for her with brand new tires and a tune up. I started this thread asking about how to identify those that need their groceries paid for. If you have more ideas about directly giving to those that need it, please share them. Please don’t just tell me to donate to another charity.

The beauty of the food bank is that it knocks out an expense for almost anyone who uses it, leaving them more cash to buy a tank of gas or school supplies or medication. Everyone needs food. Someone who needs more money for gas can get that if their grocery bill is reduced by $20. Money is fungible, so addressing the most fundamental needs ends up solving that problem of double coincidence that you’re alluding to.

I don’t understand why you keep presenting this as an “either/or” scenario. I’m fully in favor of food banks. I’m also in favor of giving cash directly to those that need it. If they already have food from the food bank, more food from the food bank won’t fill the gas tank. We need both food bank, and cash to those that need it.

But there is still a huge role to be played by nonprofit organizations, especially in meeting the foundational needs like food, water, shelter, and medical care.

I agree with you on this. Keep doing what you’re doing.

In that way, it’s still more efficient to give to cost-effective charities because meeting that need can still result in more cash in that needy person’s pocket.

This statement ignores two issues:

1. Identification of cost-effective strategies requires time and energy (and likely transportation requirement) from both donors and service recipients. Those at the bottom end of the economic spectrum usually have all of those things in short supply.
2. Your statement also assumes that there exists locally a cost-effective charity that serves every need of life of those in need.

I appreciate you’re trying to take the macro approach and on paper its not wrong. In practice the limits of my donation ability isn’t going to move the needle on a city wide or nationwide approach. However, if I can put $20 in someone’s hand’s they can immediately address an urgent need or stave off an urgent need with $20 of mitigation. I don’t know of a charity that’s going to put $20 of gas in their car so they can continue to make it to work on time so they keep their job. I don’t know of a charity that will get them $20 worth of school fees so their kids can continue to get educated.

There’s no wrong way to donate that I can think of. Keep doing what you’re doing to help. I’ll keep doing my way too. Both of us are working on the same goal of helping others. We’re just going at it from different directions.

Also, I would ultimately prefer my donations to go directly to the people that need it without administrative overhead shaving off percentages.

The fact is, the larger food nonprofits can effectively feed people for cheaper than individuals can achieve on their own. Much of it comes from scale, and some of it comes from being able to manage supply chains to intercept what would be waste from distributors, retailers, etc.

I have two issues with your reply:

1. I’d love to give cash directly to my local food bank. They don’t accept cash donations, only credit card, personal checks, or ACH transfers. I also believe that food banks are likely better stewards of donations rather than giant charities with multiple layers of administration such as the United Way. I would love it if the food bank would allow me to walk in and hand them my cash.

2. Your response is solving only for the food problem. I fully agree that the food bank is a great solution with bulk buying and known logistics for collecting, buying, and dispensing food, but not all problems those in need have are food problems. If I give a $20 bill to someone, yes, they could “inefficiently” buy food with it. Or maybe they’ll get food from the food bank and they have more pressing needs that the food bank doesn’t solve like paying for medication, rent, or school supplies for their kids. Whatever the need is, I trust the person in need to spend the cash I give them as they know their needs better than anyone else. Frankly, I find others deciding on how those in need should spend money to be incredibly dismissive and condescending. These folks in need are just like us in every regard, except they don’t have as much money. We are equals in every way except life has given me enough money and them not enough. They are no worse than the rest of us on how they spend money. I can’t know their needs better than they do. I give cash directly to the person that needs it because I trust them to know how to spend it better than anyone else.

You’re better off donating that money to a local food bank. Some stores around here also have pre-bagged meals that you can buy for them to donate to those in need, but the food bank will be able to stretch your money further.

I do that too, but the local largest food bank has conditions that don’t make it preferable for monetary donation. I would really prefer anonymous donations, and that isn’t easily possible with my food bank. They do not accept cash. Also, I would ultimately prefer my donations to go directly to the people that need it without administrative overhead shaving off percentages.

On multiple occasions I went to the food bank and handed out cash to patrons that were in line waiting for food. No strings, no obligations, just give them a friendly wave and hand them bills before moving on to the next car. I know people are in need if they’re at the food bank, and I trust they know how to spend the cash better than I do, so I give cash. The food bank asked me to stop doing that.

If I’m at the grocery store and I want to pay for someone else’s groceries, what are clues I could see indicating that they are deeply in need?

Is this Jack Lang going to give the “proud boys” their Brownshirts, or will they be required to provide their own?

I can see not wanting immigration. I can understand how that is something people might genuinely want. I don’t personally agree with it but i can understand it.

I can’t understand not wanting immigration. As economies develop the local population has fewer children. This leaves a nation with a declining birth rate which results in a negative replacement rate. This means more people are dying everyday (usually from old age) than are being born to replace them in the population. At this point a nation has three choices:

• Do nothing. As time advances, this means the nation dies because its people simply die off. Realistically, as soon as the population drops low enough, the country will be invaded and taken by another country. The result, the original nation ceases to exist. This is the path that Japan and South Korea are on which both have negative replacement rates and very restrictive immigration rules.
• Force your population to give birth. This is what Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu did starting in 1967 with Decree 770. Abortion was made illegal. Birth Control was made illegal (sound familiar for the USA these days?). Women were made to visit state hospitals monthly to monitor for pregnancy. Once pregnant, the secret police would track expectant mothers to make sure she carried to term or faced the threat of law. Material mortality skyrocketed. Orphan populations skyrocketed because unwanted children were being forced to be born to parents that didn’t want children. This lead to a spike in child mortality.
• Immigration. Allow others to enter your nation to keep the population stable or slightly growing to make up for the shortfall in birth rate from the domestic population. Canada does this successfully. To-date, this has also been the path the USA has been on, and has been able to buck the trend of a declining population currently being faced but much of the rest of the highly developed economy nations. Under trump, that is reversing, which means we’re going to be choosing #1 or #2 on this list soon.

Given those three choices, immigration sounds like is an awesome choice! I can’t understand why anyone would want a different choice.

I don’t even know anyone on any side that is against deporting illegal immigrants.

Hi! Nice to meet you. Now you know at least one that is.

Lets put the humanitarian argument aside right now, as I don’t think that would resonate with you. I’d much prefer a sane immigration system in the USA exist where there is a clear path to citizenship for the many people that come to our borders willing to do the jobs in our economy that Americans won’t do, that our economy and society depend on. Since we don’t have that sane immigration system, the undocumented immigrants that are here, and doing the work, while paying taxes into systems they can’t derive social benefits from are doing us a great service in propping us up.

Even the most cold-hearted economic conservative should recognize deporting these folks and their families is going to blow a giant hole in our labor force, skyrocketing prices, and destroying our economy. Even the Republican President Reagan in 1986 saw this and granted amnesty to decades of undocumented immigrants that had arrived before 1982. source

So whats your plan for all the jobs and services that undocumented people are doing today that go undone if you get your way?

Oh shit! I can’t believe it took me this long to figure out that MAGA means: Make Argentina Great Again

TIL: god loves tooth decay /s

trump seems to have no problems wearing that title.

…and perhaps most importantly: compound interest

This applies not only to growth, but to debt.

Kind of. AI is now the catch all now but that’s because LLM were called generative AI. So the older terms all followed suit to catch the hype train. But most of the problems with AI are LLM specifics.

Generative AI is a specific subset of Deep Learning, which is a subset of Machine Learning, which is a subset of AI. Generative AI includes more than just LLMs. It also includes the image and video AI creations. There are also GenAI than makes music.

Machine Learning is typically creating versions of things that existed prior, or recreating things from behavior extracted from prior data. Deep Learning is similar but employs neural networks of various types. The distinction between GenAI and Deep Learning is that GenAI creates something that never existed before, essentially original works.

Your base point in this conversation stands though. The Deep Learning used in science for analyzing patterns or behavior in, say, biology, is very different (and its more useful) than GenAI and the slop it can produce.

Great example of this is Oklahoma.

A counter example is Kansas. GOP Sam Brownback, elected in 2011, destroyed the state’s economy following harsh right-wing philosophies turning the state into what many called “Brownbackistan” referencing his authoritarian approach. Brownback resigned at the lowest point after all his damage was done. The GOP lieutenant governor finished out the remaining 1 year of the term. At the next election in 2019 Democrat Laura Kelly won the office. She’s still governor to this day having been re-elected in 2022.

They will just blame someone else anyway and their well-indoctrinated morons will believe it…

I’m not sure the team-sports-like-cult still holds as much power when the paychecks stop coming.

No recent sources. Months ago the article I read said that this was only happening at 6 border crossings, but there were plans to expand it to more.

or at least, it wasn’t when I went through last time. But I’m also a US Citizen and may not have been subjected to the customs queues in ways that non-US passport holders are - idk, it was a few years ago.

trump changed this in the last 6 months or so. While there are still many Canadian crossings that you can leave the USA freely (to go to Canadian border guards side), trump has now set up USA border guards on the USA side even for US Citizens attempting to leave the USA to go to Canada. I think there are 6 or 8 right now at some of the largest crossings. Its already announced more are coming. trump doesn’t want us leaving.

I’d think the same, though it sounds like the US border guards might try to stop him ever reaching the Canadian side.

Right now there are only a handful of border crossings from the US to Canada that have border guards challenging Americans leaving the USA, and all of these are new under trump in the last 6 months. The usual place USA border guards challenge is on entering the USA.