Libertarianism is a Flawed Philosophy

High taxes on the rich because they can afford it? And I suppose the poor get tax cuts because they can't afford it. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the United States adopted a classically conservative policy that there was no rolling tax rate? That everyone paid taxes at the same percent? The problem with tax breaks for the poor in lieu of a fair tax system is that it's unnecessarily unfair to those who are paying more - in this case the rich. You can't simply attribute a position of inequality in the system of government to a single political ideology, especially with that political party has never held substantive power in US politics at the national level. Economic Darwinism is precisely what the economy needs. Perfect case in point - in Indianapolis, the construction of the Lucas Oil Stadium (What a god-awful name) was undertaken at the expense of the taxpayer. This money was then given to a private corporation (the Colts Franchise, owned by Jim Irsay) in order for them to conduct business. That is plainly illegal and stupid. Why should the government take money from the citizens to keep businesses afloat? If the business is a stable and profitable one, it needs no government assistance. It is the height of folly to subscribe to a system wherein weaker links in the economic chain are kept intact artificially - it's like taping a rope together... when any weight is put on the rope (economic downturn where the government can't afford to keep these weak businesses afloat) then the rope breaks. Another PRIME case in point - the current (almost) economic recession. Caused in part by sub-prime mortgages to people that simply can't pay their loans back. This is a huge problem - if one practiced some Economic Darwinism, then these people would never have been able to get approved for a loan in the first place. You seem to be under the quite mistaken impression that it is a human right to "live comfortably." It is absolutely NOT a right to live comfortably. It is a right to live. In a nation where a high school education is free, and a single person can live comfortably working 40 hours a week at a job that requires little or no training... not being able to pay bills is a matter or poor fiscal management, not the evil Libertarian bastards that don't run the government. Of course, there are individual cases where paying bills IS legitimately a day-to-day problem. These people, however, have a special circumstance like a disability or simple bad luck nearly 100% of the time. The solution? Microfinance loans - it seems to work in Africa where the populace makes something like US $2 a week. I suppose it might possibly work in the inner city, where one can make between 5 and 10K a year (tax free) simply by BEGGING. Were fortunes made on merit? An interesting question... There are three possibilities for obtaining a fortune in the first place: Merit, bequeathing, and theft. Winning the lottery would fall under bequeathing, since it is essentially a form of gambling. It is obvious how entrepreneurs could earn a fortune by merit. Large gifts of money are not bequeathed to individuals who are not meritorious, else it is simply a form of nepotism, which could be considered theft. So unless you suggest that the vast majority of wealthy people have stolen their money, I submit that fortunes at their root are by and large the result of meritorious individuals. Inheriting that wealth says nothing about how it was accrued. Your point about schooling is fair at best, but still incomplete. The percent of families that can afford to send a child to college without a loan is insanely small (if scholarships are considered a replacement for a loan). Thus, there is no substantial difference between a middle class family that can't afford college and a low class family that can't afford college. However, once again... a single person with a high school education, working 40 hours a week can make a living and get approved for a loan to go to college. The free market has nothing to do with the fact that poor families can't afford to send their kids to college. Do you honestly believe that somehow, regulating the market will provide low-class families with an extra $20,000 a year to send a child to college. And why would they spend it on a single child when the good of the many outweighs the good of the few? You seem to be confusing the locus of blame. It is not the free market, but rather the insistence by political forces that we must control the market. As a result, half-controls like minimum wage have been applied. The result is a loss of jobs overseas and fewer manufacturing jobs that could be taken by these low-class people that complain that we need a minimum wage because they simply want more money at a job they want to do instead of simply working their way up the economic ladder. I never suggested inheritance was merit. I suggested, as I explained above that the money in an inheritance was accrued through merit. I see no reason for a man to inherit $50 Million from his hard-working father as long as he doesn't squander that money away. Inheritance has absolutely nothing to do with people trapped in a service economy... what is the government going to do? Take the man's money and distribute it to service employees? I don't know about you, but I'd like to be poor - sounds like we get free money from the rich... sounds like THE WELFARE SYSTEM. Social mobility is easy in the United States. Case in point - all of my immediate relatives for two generations were born in literally poverty. Two generations later, ALL of my first cousins are in, or have completed college at private universities with minimal debt. How can you tell me that social mobility is very difficult when the average immigrant-American family is clearly capable of moving from poverty to wealth in two generations? It simply requires WORK, which is not a common motivator anymore, because of ridiculous economic controls that seek to balance the distribution of wealth in the nation with the largest middle class in the world. De-incentivize the drive to work for societal change, and you see a greater division between the rich and poor than before. Until the rise of economic controls like minimum wage, welfare, and other social programs, much of the US (excluding big business gurus) lived at roughly the same economic level. As we have historically seen - more control = more division. The poor are not trapped in a box in a country where education is FREE. Once again - Libertarianism was not responsible for the Great Depression. The causes were things like buying on credit and stock speculation. Buying a good or service on credit creates debt, and when demand for a product bought on credit falls, a company fails, lays off their employees, and goes bankrupt. When this happens across a country, it creates a depression. Once again - Libertarianism is not responsible for the gap between the rich and the poor (as though that's actually an issue with the size of the US middle class), nor the Great Depression, nor the fact that the poor don't want to work in a system that will give them money for free.