I agree, only because we can't seem to stop it. Spending other people's money is the single uniting aspect of politicians. I see private charity as being more than capable of carrying the load if and when the government assistance is terminated. When the government steps in, private support goes somewhere else. I agree, the truely hungry, the truely damaged should have a place to go.
People who will look at your success and envy you, or rob from you, or even try to kill you.
This is an arguement that falls on deaf ears for me. I have of course heard it from some liberal thinkers before you. "We support afirmative action and welfare because if we don't, the people in the ghetto will rise up against us". Well, we should help them but welfare leads to dependency and afirmative action denies true merit and is in itself a form of discrimination which in reverse we would not tolerate. The help needs to be offered in the form of a lifetime of learning and not a day of relief.
There is little danger that the voters are going to agree to tax themselves into poverty. But since we all benefit from being in society, it makes sense to ask people to pay into the system to keep it running.
It is an interesting arguement. In the college dorm, the mere fact that some students did not intend to go to social functions allowed the majority to drop a redistributive tax called "social dues" and make each event a pay as you go. It destroyed the otherwise wonderful social life in the dorm. I believe as a liberal you would agree that you should not have to pay for services you might not use of a social nature, but would be quite willing that we should all pay for services of a charitable nature. I believe the tax limit is reached when people lose their incentive to earn more. Not all the way to poverty, just when they lose their personal incentive is too far. Let's continue to move in the direction of building incentives for people to move up in the quality of living that we all desire. Let them share more of the wealth earned by their hands, and let the education system properly serve both the learners but also the people who need adult training. I would much rather support education than prisons. But mind this, I would not tolerate extortion from the ghetto or the left wing, I would expect it to be met with the force of rational thought and the police force if necessary.
I agree that the appeal to our better angels is preferable. But for those who ask why they should care about others, it may be useful to remind them that desperate people often do desperate things. It may not seem our problem, but it can become our problem when people think (rightly or wrongly) they have nothing left to lose. My concern is that we do the right thing. You seem to agree. I don't think there is any real argument between us.