>How are your options limited? The US has over 1 million nonprofit public charities plus 400,000 other nonprofit organizations...Note your numbers claim effort, not results, a telling sign of failure to achieve them.
And when we compare our results with our purported over-the-top effort, we are faced with the dizzying proportions of our failure. Why are these measurements so astronomically unproportionate? The private charity system lacks evidence-based incentives. It is egregiously inefficient and in it's best cases relies on rich guilt and virtue signalling. This prioritizes advertising over problem solving, and even worse, it by-and-large rewards organizations who minimize problem solving. Our charities provide images, not solutions, and only a fool could wonder why. In the other cases, the charity organizations are tax dumps that either don't address a worthy cause or apply an ineffective solution (sometimes a solution that even worsens the problem) simply because success is not correlated with the intent. Many of them do nothing but invest in capital. They get away with it because investment and effort are the only measurements calculated. Results don't matter. Most free-market economies are quick to identify this as a problem. If it works, why hasn't it worked?
>The answer is clearly not very simple. Poverty is not only globally prevalent, it has never been eradicated by any historical or modern society, ever...
Your assertion that poverty cannot be eradicated is a straw man. I'm sure you'll understand my decision to ignore it.
To the question of how to fight poverty: When private solutions don't work, public options are simple to apply. And plenty of evidence provided by our own history and fellow western nations makes it pretty reliable. Less than perfect? Yes. Ugly with poor branding? Well yes, but that's not the point. The point is: it works.
>I assumed by this you meant support a political party committed to expanding the public safety net...
I wish it were that simple. But, your assumptions are premature; that is not what I meant. I am not a democrat and I don't recommend taking those measures you assume, precisely for the reasons you have already detailed. The American electoral process hasn't offered a candidate who dependably supports an honest expansion of safety nets in my lifetime. It came close with Bernie Sanders. He is the only hope I am aware of.
>It seems to me that any effort to fight poverty through political means is extremely indirect. The $1 you spend on, for example, campaign contributions, is going to pay to win an election first...
These are all good points which apply to most candidates, but it should be pointed out here that Bernie Sanders undermines them. It's very difficult to support candidates. We desperately need a modern electoral process which limits campaign spending (again, see other western democracies). Until then, you can probably count on Bernie Sander's campaign to appreciate and respectfully process your donations into political measures. His track record, consistency and refusal to accept donations from corporate/private interests offers thus-far reliable
>I hope I've shown that politics is probably the most inefficient method your time and money could be used to help the poor, and that helping the poor can be done effectively without touching politics...
Not in the least. Still open, but none of this was new to me. All pretty obvious.