Government Wealth Redistribution

It's inherently undesirable because people are selfish. Given the choice, not many people are actually going to donate. And I'm not advocating punishing them for not donating to charity, I just want to skim a little off the top with taxes and give it to people who need it, because otherwise they likely won't get anything. Sure, some people will donate, but I don't think you can deny the fact that there's going to be a lot less money going to the poor that way. Here's my favorite response: "When did the welfare of the poor become the obligation of those with wealth?" Oh, I don't know, it's kind of the basis of a our government. Or something. Look at the preamble of the Constitution, for example: "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." The ‘general welfare' is also mentioned in Article 1, Section 8, the section giving the Congress its powers. "Promote the general welfare"? As far as I know, that means that the Constitution was written to do things for the good of everyone, unless you've got another definition for general welfare. Obviously, the poor are part of ‘everyone' so... And it's not like we just threw that in to cover anything we may not have mentioned. This idea of ‘general welfare' had been floating around over 150 years before our constitution was written, and it was also mentioned in the Articles of Confederation. So you know we made it a point to put it there. "There is a fine line separation here between the natural instinct of charity (which is founded on individual choice) and that of an obligation?" Exactly. I want helping the poor to be an obligation. If we're successful, and living in a country where the ‘general welfare' is so important, we should be obliged to help others. It's not like taxes are going to economically hurt the average middle class citizen, the money the poor get from them could mean the difference between eating this week or starving. If it's such a small thing, why not just make everyone pitch in? "I merely pointed out that when you remove a certain portion of wealth from an individual, they will have to make choices on how to use that, now reduced, wealth." Okay, so a few people are going to donate to charity a bit more. That's not going to make up for the millions who are just happy to be keeping more of their money to themselves. "I would hardly attest the state of New Orleans to the private charity of Americans, but rather to the incompetence of their government." Those are privately owned houses. The only ones to blame there are the insurance companies that refuse to pay citizens. But at any rate, people can't afford to rebuild and no one donates to them. But there are plenty of other examples of citizen apathy, if you'd like them. As an example, 10% of money donated to charities is actually donated to the poor. The other 90% goes to museums and universities. Which is pretty selfish. Most of those donations are to get their kids into the colleges they want, or to get family names on a plaque in the new art museum. By the way, the amount of money donated to the poor through charities is only equal to about 4% of the amount of money given to the poor through taxes. For the record, if you get rid of taxes going to the poor, they lose 95.97% of the money given to them, through the combined efforts of the government and charity. Granted a few more people may donate to charity, but you know as well as I do that we're not going to jump into action and cover that 96%. That's over $477 billion dollars. Also, through all these donations, each person benefiting from government programs and charities and whatnot only gets about $12,000 a year. Which, I think you'll agree, is not much. If you get rid of government programs, that leaves everyone with a $480 dollars a year. It costs $2,600 for one person to eat for a year. So, funded solely on donations, if you're totally homeless and don't require healthcare, you can still only survive for about 2 1/2 months. How do you like those numbers? "A legal obligation to do something is hardly a moral justification." It doesn't have to be. One group has to do something. One group can if it wants to. Which is actually going to get the job done? It's just our responsibility to take care of the poor. Sometimes we have to be made to take care of our responsibilities. "You can hardly place welfare or any other "help to the poor" as a public good precisely because the addition of one more poor person increases the cost by a nonzero amount." Well, by the accepted definition ‘public good' public schools wouldn't qualify either. Add another student, cost goes up. And I hope you're not going to say that we should do away with public schooling. Not all the things we fund are fall perfectly under the category of ‘public good', but they're still ‘general welfare'. "If you tax the same person who cannot afford to give charity because of their financial situation then you will do them harm." Gaah! Let's try this again. If you want to pay the same amount to the poor, and less people give money to the poor, then the remaining people must give more money to the poor. More money equals more financial stress, which makes it harder to give to charity. And if people's net worth goes down, so do their taxes, anyway. This is done precisely so we won't do them harm. And this about the booming upper class being a farce. There are always people profiting off of things. Unless it's something so crippling that there's no chance of recovery, there are plenty of people to tax, and if not them, tax corporations. For the record, I don't see how the taxing corporations thing is that off-topic. You could lower taxes on individuals, making the libertarians happy, and raise them on corporations. You can then use the money for government services, like helping the poor. Everybody wins. You'd think you'd focus your energy on something worthwhile, like that. And, sure the Salvation Army seems to have a lot of volunteers now, but again, charities equal about 4% of money given through taxes. And the Salvation Army only handles a fraction of that 4%. Now, if by some miracle, people pitch in the same amount as they would have given through taxes, the Salvation Army is going to be totally overwhelmed. All of these charities work great on a small scale, but they won't be able to handle that many more donations, and they just plain won't have the manpower for it. Even the ones without volunteer labor aren't going to be able to handle that kind of influx of donations. And market forces are completely heartless. I wouldn't want corporations helping the poor. As it is, health insurance companies actually pay people to find ways to deny paying customers' healthcare because they don't want to waste the money on them. Do you really want people like that in charge of welfare? "The Constitution is practically a model of a libertarian government. It worked quite well, for those it applied to, until people of your ideological bent gained power." Until people of my ideological bent gained power, we had robber-barons bribing congress (Central Pacific Railroad, much?) and a corrupt upper-class taking advantage of the poor. We had children working twelve hour workdays in dangerous situations, because their families couldn't afford to let them stay home and go to school. We forced people to basically enter indentured servitude because they were only paid company scrip, which couldn't actually be exchanged for real money. How exactly was this working well, again?