| | Pete,
The things that come to mind include attacking the pragmatic side of the issue. Is it practical to expect that government will be the best thing for the poor and the disadvantaged? I'd say no.
When has government made improvements in an area where they intervene? It is hard to find examples. When has a free market raised the level of income and improved life for entire societies? Lots of example here (look at the list of all mostly free nations).
When government takes dollars from the private sector and spends them in a given area, there are three effects: - 1) the market place grows poorer and has less money - this is the very disposable income that is on the margin that would have gone to private charity,
- 2.) When the government spends money in an area it drive out private competition, even when the area is that of simple charity. Far less money goes to private charity because people start to see that as something that is covered by government. Poverty is not a good thing to subsidize unless you want more of it, and
- 3.) The very vitality of the market is diminished by the burden of government and this means that ease with which someone can move themselves out of poverty or make up for any natural disadvantage is diminished.
But I would never let someone get away with the moral stance of altruism. I'd always say that there is no moral value in in taking money at gun point. That charity is only moral, if at all, when it is a free choice of the individual. And most of all, no one has the right to say that their neediness constitutes a claim on any part of my life. Government's only moral purpose is to protect us from force, not to use force to take away our money which is then spent by elites according to their whims. The individuals are the sovereign entities who institute government to serve their purposes fairly, and equally.
Human beings have an almost endless capacity to create improvement when they are given a free market place. That includes finding the best systems to help people rise above poverty and disability. But when government interferes it will have the opposite effect and end up freezing people in the worst state, inhibiting the creative drives that improve the very systems that will one day eliminate poverty and disability, and punish the productive while destroying the very individual rights that all of our freedoms depend upon.
When people don't understand that human creativity (reason, imagination, and choice) and the freedom it depends upon are BOTH the base of our rights and the well-spring of wealth... They won't see the free market as the actual way to diminish poverty, and they are will remain vulnerable to the guilt and the false promises of the welfare program advocates. If they really care about poor people, they'll keep the government out of the poverty business.
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