Welfare is an applicable stance for a Libertarian

My opponent's argument can be broken down into the following two syllogisms:A)P1- Some people can't workP2- Charity is not enough to cover these peopleC- Therefore, we need welfareB)P1- Poor people steal more (and then end up in prison)P2- Prison costs outweigh welfare costs C- Welfare is the lesser of two evilsLet's unpack these arguments.First off, we have to understand where welfare comes from and why this is a problem. Welfare money comes from taxation, which means it creates a dead weight loss by artificially shifting the supply curve of good X to the left. In this case, X is any good that is taxed. This means the quantity supplied of good X/dollar is lowered, creating an artificial equilibrium which results in inefficiency (represented by the dead weight loss highlighted in red). Welfare taxation also creates inefficiency because part of the revenue collected goes to paying the middle-management folk who handle and hand out the collected tax revenue -- meaning what we put into the system is always more than we get out. Libertarians contend that liberty follows economic freedom. That is, the freer the market, the freer the people, and any artificial economic inefficiency the government causes will needlessly impeach on the liberty of the people. It impeaches on their liberty because tax money is collected under the threat of force, which violates the non-aggression principle (NAP); which is the foundation of libertarianism [1].The purpose of the NAP is to establish a moral stance supporting the notion of liberty, and so in the interest of liberty, some libertarians supersede the NAP and condone a certain level of taxation (typically for defence) under the excuse that such taxation results in a net liberty gain. My opponent is making a similar argument for welfare. My point here is that welfare taxation both violates the NAP and creates economic inefficiency and it is therefore my opponent's burden, as a libertarian, to show that this trade-off ends in a net liberty gain. He has laid out a conjectural argument this round, but he needs to back up this argument with real world statistics to actually make his case. In the meantime, I will make the statistical argument that such taxation is unnecessary and therefore against libertarian ideology.Syllogism AP1- Some people can't workHow many people are we talking about here? According to the U.S. department of commerce, 4.3 million people are on welfare (not including food stamps or unemployment insurance). This will cost the government about 132 billion dollars annually [2]. It's important to note that food stamps are not welfare and unemployment insurance is not welfare. These numbers are only welfare numbers.P2- Charity is not enough to cover these peopleThis is where pro's case starts to break down. In any given year in America (post recession), just shy of 300 BILLION dollars are donated as charity [3]. That's nearly 2.3x as much money as is needed for welfare. Consider that this 300 billion dollars is donated despite the current tax burden. Right now, government spending represents just under 40% of GDP [4]. This means that if America were to adopt a libertarian system, we could free up 40% of the markets private capital that is currently locked up in government spending, allowing for the potential for even greater amounts of donations. Even if we grant this libertarian society taxation for defence spending (and we don't reduce said defence spending in any way) we've still freed up over 80% of government spending into the private market [5]. Assuming charitable donations went up proportionately with the amount of GDP turned over to the private sector in a libertarian system, we could expect to see 400-420 billion dollars in charitable spending -- and this is a very conservative estimate as it deals only with freed up capital and doesn't take into account the increased efficiency of the free market or the lesser needs of those who need welfare thanks to a smaller tax burden whatsoever.To conclude, charitable donation is already much higher than it needs to be to cover welfare costs in the U.S. right now, let alone under a libertarian system. Therefore, welfare taxation needlessly sacrifices market efficiency and needlessly violates the NAP, which are the basis of libertarianism. Syllogism BP1- Poor people steal more (and then end up in prison)Let's grant pro some liberties here and assume that every prisoner in jail for robbery/theft committed their crime because they couldn't work and would have starved otherwise. Obviously this isn't the case, but it won't matter as we will soon see. There are 2.26 million people in prison in the united states right now [7]. Of which, about 8% were convicted for robber/larceny/burglary [10]. That's a little over 180,000 people. As stated earlier, let's go easy on pro and assume all 180,000 thieves stole for subsistence reasons only.P2- Prison costs more than welfare The annual cost per prisoner varies from 13,000 to 47,000 [8], so we will assume the average cost of $30,000/year. 30k x 180k equals 5.4 billion dollars. The cost of welfare annually is 132 billion dollars. This means even ignoring that we're looking at the U.S. system and not a libertarian society that would result in even less need for subsistence motivated theft AND ignoring that we're assuming every single case of theft is the result of financial necessity, the prison cost for incarcerating thieves is still only 4% of the cost of welfare. All right, but what if every single welfare recipient turned into a thief without their welfare check? The average welfare recipient receives about $36,000 per year. That's right, 36 thousand. In fact, only 4 states actually pay welfare recipients less than minimum wage [9]. This means that the U.S. would actually save 28.5 billion dollars (4.3 million welfare recipients x 6000 dollars saved by going to prison) by imprisoning every single welfare recipient. Obviously not every single welfare recipient would resort to theft if they lost welfare (nor would they have to with all the charity money available), but even if they did, it would still be cheaper, meaning the economic inefficiency caused by a welfare system is unnecessary.ConclusionIn this round I've shown how, under the current U.S. system (even with all its flaws) there's more than enough money available in the form of charity to cover welfare needs multiple times over. I've also established that even in a worst-case-scenario where welfare was removed, absolutely no charity money was used for welfare, AND every single former welfare recipient became a subsistence criminal there after, all it would do is save the U.S. almost 30 billion dollars. Given that a welfare system both results in market inefficiency AND violates the NAP without resulting in a net liberty increase, it is clear that libertarianism and the welfare state are not compatible. The resolution has been negated.1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. http://www.statisticbrain.com... 3. http://www.marketplace.org... 4. http://en.wikipedia.org... 5. http://econperspectives.blogspot.ca... 6. http://www.fbi.gov... 7. http://en.wikipedia.org... 8. http://en.wikipedia.org... 9. http://www.cato.org...10. http://www.bop.gov...;