Quote: (06-05-2013 10:44 AM)scorpion Wrote:
Charities are a great scam. A lot of people think that the term "non-profit" or "not-for-profit" means that an organization has to abide by some kind of bare-bones spending agenda in order to donate as much as possible. Not even close. If you look at most of these so-called "charitable" organizations you will find them stuffed to the gills with highly paid "administrators" and "consultants". The idea is to bring in a ton of money through donations and then spend as much as possible on expenses, salaries, overhead, etc... Then they "donate" whatever is left over, and in many cases these donations involve kickbacks from the recipient or some other kind of tit-for-tat exchange.
And this is not even factoring in the way that the wealthy elite are able to abuse "charitable foundations". Rich guy can create a charity and donate a few hundred grand a year to it, for which he gets a huge tax write-off. Then he can have the charity employ his wife and children and pay them and salary. He can also use it for huge leverage in business deals, having the charity make donations or employ people as "consultants". There are a ton of ways to abuse charitable foundations. Why do you think the rich are so heavily involved in charity? It sure as fuck isn't because they have hearts of gold.
Yeah - this is something I have being thinking for the past few years. But it is hard to find any books by journalists looking into things from this point of view. I would be interested in any recommendations.
The thing that always struck me is this. You have a guy who goes to an elite school or elite university. He gets to know alot of people in the worlds of media, celebrity, politics and business. Take Eton school in the UK for example.
He then decides to set up a charity. Which can be any random pet project - let's say giving laptops to kids in Mozambique.
Well - he can then employ himself to run it (paying himself what he wants) and employ others as well.
And then tap up his rich friends for corporate donations and help with lavish fundraisers.
And once you have a few people doing this sort of thing - you can distance yourself from such neptotism by hiring the family of friends and vice versa.
And - on top of that - the government helps you along since you probably don't have to pay corporation taax like most other companies do.
The whole thing is ripe for abuse and strikes me as a simple way for the self-serving elites to help keep other employed in comfortable, fun (organising fundraising events) and well paid jobs. And then be seen by society as good and kind people for doing so.
A quick look on GOOGLE suggests there are 150,000 registered charities in the UK. This is in a country with an adult population of 51 million people.
And I can assure you that most of these charities were set up (and are run) by people who went to posh schools - and not your run down local comprehensive.
And each one of these charities becomes a self-perpetuating class in which the people looking out for each other can continue to do so. Over many generations.
I haven't had a chance to look into this yet. But I think there is alot of scope for some interesting investigative work in to what really goes on in the charity sector.
Of course my cynicism may be totally unfounded. But - I would be surprised if that is the case. But I am prepared to be shown otherwise.
As such - I would be interested to see what others think of my (and Scorpion's) take on things?
