I posted on facebook that if churches were to pay taxes, it would pay for food stamps for every person on welfare. A smartass acquaintance from high school commented this:


"Of course, this statistic is only meaningful if you believe the government would make better use of that money than the churches do. I, for one, do not.

I can't speak for the churches of others, but I can tell you that mine imposes a nearly 0% overhead in administering the charitable contributions that filter through it. I know this to be true, because I am one of the countless people that give their free time to make that happen.

On the other hand, the CATO Institute estimates that 70% of every entitlement dollar the government receives is lost to administration fees. I recognize that this is a conservative think tank, and therefore it would only be fair for you to question its numbers. (It would sure be nice if even the government itself could give us an accurate figure.)

I would hope that you aren't being naive enough to believe the number is anything less than 50%? No private charity would survive with numbers like that."


I am currently working and do not have time to research statistics for this. Normally I wouldn't bother but his condescending tone and obvious blind sheep believing that the Mormon corporation is charitable must not go unchecked!
I hate to be lazy and depend on y'all to respond, but I know there are so many whizzes at this type of stuff here, so many intelligent ex-Mormons out there who know waaay more than I do. I heard something to the effect that the Mormon Corp. only gives about $5 per tithe paying member per year to charity?

Also if anyone has any credible info on GA salaries etc that would be awesome!!

Thank you in advance to all you smart cookies out there!!

I am no good at doing statistics but I do know about null hypothesis. The reality is the church may claim 0% costing on charity administration. But the fact is of all the money coming into the church every week, if you measured out the admin across all of it and the admin of it all…it could be easy to bang all the numbers into a computer and come up with the presumption that there is no cost for welfare…because…by comparison to investiture, the amount spent on welfare is very small and will come up with a small figure which will be unreliable.
One thing about researcher…if they want to MAKE their hypothesis work…they can! Its called cheating.

how about asking him for some sources on his claim. After all, he made it. He should be able to support it.

Good point. I will do that!