The argument for Government sponsored welfare, to aid the poor and needy Options

[sadolakced acid]

Alright, so. Government sponsored welfare. government give jobs and food, money, etc. to people who are too poor, etc.

some say it'd be good

some say it's thier fault they're poor

some say leave it to religious institutes...

etc.

discuss.

[fameONE]

I've been poor. I've been on welfare. I've been in a living situation where, even with government aid, my entire family questioned how we were going to eat our next meal.

Religious institutions shouldn't aid the poor simply because I don't see how its their place to help the people of our country, espacially with all of the different sects of Christianity out there.

The government owes it to its people to render aid. If you can "help" out families in Iraq, you can damn sure put food on the table of a man with 10 kids and who works a blue collar job.

[ComradeRed]

First, I'd like to point out that you guys have some interesting monetary theories. The nominal value of your currency doesn't matter--America would be just as rich if the dollar was worth 100 Euros as if it was worth 1/100th of a Euro. The value of money just depends on how much is in circulation--it doesn't measure the actual productivity of the economy. Think about it this way, a Mountain is the same height no matter if it is measured in meters or feet. Similarly, an economy is the same in productivity no matter if it is measured in currency with high or low nominal values.

Religious institutions shouldn't aid the poor simply because I don't see how its their place to help the people of our country, espacially with all of the different sects of Christianity out there.

But we should help the poor! Jesus said so!

The government owes it to its people to render aid. If you can "help" out families in Iraq, you can damn sure put food on the table of a man with 10 kids and who works a blue collar job.

I'm going to quote ex-Congressman Davy Crockett on this: "What is worse, it [taxes] presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers. So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give at all; and as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other."

The reason that welfare isn't in the Constitution is because the Founding Fathers realized that the government had no place robbing Peter to pay Paul and that it only opened it up to a torrent of abuses, especially under an income tax, which creates deadweight loss (for every dollar that goes to the government, more than a dollar is taken from the economy since people work less as the income tax increases reducing productivity--think about it, if the income tax was 100%, would anyone work?)

But if we must help the poor, the way to do it is through the Earned Income Tax Credit, by which you pay a "negative" income tax if you make a low income. This is a good idea, because people still have an incentive to work.

Sharpandcuddly, if you can't afford food but you can afford Internet, there's a problem.

Brandon, WHY does the government have a job to aid the needy? The US Government was founded on the Constitution and on the principles of the Declaration of Independence--neither of these says or even remotely implies that the government should help the needy. It seems that "Government should provide charity" has become a mantra as of late, but when you think about it, it doesn't really have a mantra in law or even in morality--every cent the government gives to the someone is forcibly extracted from someone else.

If you're interested in the whole Crockett Speech that explains the immorality of welfare, it's at http://www.house.gov/paul/nytg.htm