First, my post regarding "equality" was primarily focused on this government (one of their great slogans is "todos incluidos" - everyone included) and the fact that it is so obviously hypocritical between what it says and what it does (both at the governmental level and at the personal level of the majority of those who are in government). Argentina is one of the extreme examples.
Now, look at any country that purports to "care for the unfortunate". People of that country thumping their breasts proudly and saying "we care about our poor, so we subsidize them." It's a moral stance that I, personally, feel is invalid.
It's one thing when you're talking about small, homogenous countries (as the Nordic countries), where the majority pretty much think the same way and have decided together that they will all contribute toward the good of all. Personally, I don't like it, but that's OK, I don't have to - and it works for them.
But talk about a place like the US. Where is the moral stance in "a large group of us think that we should pay for poor people because they don't earn enough money. So we're going to force everyone, whether they like it or not, to contribute to such things." Where exactly is the morality in this? My beliefs (and those of a large number of people in the US) do not follow along this path. I believe that the ends do not justify the means. I do not believe that one group of voters forcing another group of voters to pay for governmental charity is moral, and therefore those who claim morality for "caring for the poor" do not have a moral leg to stand on.
Why do I feel this way? For a number of reasons.
I believe that charity should be personal. That's where the morality of helping someone comes from, a personal choice, a personal sacrifice. A government agency is cold and blind to anything but the rules that have been laid out by lawmakers, the majority of whom don't really care beyond whether or not their stance and their public-sector actions will gain them more power by keeping them in office or (maybe like Obama) are looking for something that will put their names in the history books (and if Obama really wanted to do something good with the health industry he could have actually reformed it instead of doing what he did). The amount of money required to collect the money to begin with, pay salaries, for oversight, for fraud, etc, is a big percentage of any money contributed to social welfare.
I didn't have a leg up on anything, really, that anyone else in the US didn't have. My folks were lower middle class - my father worked his ass off and my mother stayed at home and took care of us. But they couldn't afford much more than to clothe us, feed us and allow us to play sports. I remember when my graduating class went to Europe (1981) and I had to stay home because we simply couldn't afford it. I went to college - on my own nickle. I worked three freaking jobs (busboy, changed oil under cars in a stinking pit and assembled games) to put me through school - and it was hard.
I lived in a slum (I was in a dorm the first year but couldn't afford to stay there) among poor people who had little or no desire to better themselves (whitey this, whitey that, poor us who are sitting here doing nothing but complaining - I felt it interesting that as a student I made more money than the majority of them did). They had some disadvantages that I didn't have - mostly they were told by their portion of society, as well as the liberal legislators who coddled them, that they weren't to blame for their plight, just sit tight and the government will help. When those evil bastards that are holding back their money from you do their evil deeds, don't worry, we'll fight to get you the money you "deserve."
Somehow, I managed to make it. If you want something bad enough, you can work to get it - as long as opportunities exist. Here in Argentina those opportunities are far and few between because the government controls so much how people run business, etc. It's getting to be like that in the US, where it's one of the most expensive countries in the world now to do business (and why do businesses want to leave???? Geez, people. Patriotism only goes so far, as it should).
If you lose your job, you do what you need to do to survive, by taking one, two or three jobs that you hate, but you do it because it's necessary. If you don't make enough money in your current job, take another job and go to school and learn a trade or something (hey, I did it!). Don't cry that the government isn't taking care of you, even as money rolls in free every month. I knew people in that slum I lived in who wouldn't go get a job because the job they could get was only marginally more than they were getting from welfare and having a job would have taken them off the welfare rolls!
There are so many facets of all this that it's impossible to cover here, in a post, but to me, the first and most important thing in life is: personal responsibility. That goes for your personal life, as well as things you do publicly. If you, personally, feel that helping the poor is a worthwhile enterprise (and I do, very deeply), then put your money and your time where your mouth is, not other people's money. It will be better spent simply because there are no middle folk, unless you give to a private organization, but at least you can research and determine where you want your money to go and more or less how it's spent.
In the US today, there are two basic classes of people. Those who work for a living and/or have enough money that they are not a drain on anyone else, and those who depend on the system. The number that depend on the system grow every year. Many people (particularly the government) say that is because the difference between poor and rich grows every year and the middle class is going away. They attribute it to the nasty rich individuals who obviously hoard all their money and don't give any to anyone else.
Of course, they ignore the fact that 1) government does not create jobs (government jobs don't count - they produce nothing except debt and are a net loss to the economy), 2) the people with money are those who mostly invest in new businesses (and in a free country they don't have to invest all, or even the majority of their profits in new business) - i.e., the very same nasty rich that so many people abhor and 3) there isn't just one pie that everyone has to share - let's make more pies dammit!
So people who have money to spend (from lower middle class all the way up to the "nasties") won't spend very much to help the poor because the government is already taking too much and spending it poorly. Not just on the poor, but on idiotic things like military bases world-wide (in the case of the US) in some sort of misguided (and very dangerous) attempt to maintain "American Superiority".
I could go on and on. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Libertarian, of the Anarcho-Capitalist variety, but I can work with government. There's no way, yet, we could ever do without governments (mostly because there are too many folk in this world who can't imagine it, not because it's not possible), but usually you find that government causes most of the problems with their "solutions" and actually inhibits free enterprise. And with its concentration of power, it aids the rich to make themselves immune from much of the real world and they all receive a great life as a result, at the cost of the people who are actually putting their labor on the line. Make the government as small as possible, be honest and conscientious about how laws are applied, and so on and so forth and the difference would be astounding.
If you want a moral society, one who helps the poor, you can't legislate it. You can't tell people not to hate, you can't tell people to worry about others. You can ask others to join your cause, but when you're forcing others to help your cause, you have lost your moral ground.
I help the poor. I have ever since I can remember, in my adult life. I am doing so now, in a country where the government purports to do so, at great cost to myself. That's sacrifice, and not to toot my own horn but that particular aspect of my life is something I'm proud of. I'm not at all proud about where my tax money here, or in the States, is going.
So - you asked for it
In a very simple, incomplete nutshell, that's how I feel and why, and I feel very strongly that whether those of a government realize it or not, their very existence creates two classes of people, right or wrong. In my opinion, such damage should be limited to the most basic and necessary of functions such as defense (and no, the best defense is not a good offense in my opinion), police and courts, with as little law-making as possible.Personally, I believe it's possible to have everything the government currently offers, through private enterprise (yes, defense, police, courts, roads, etc), more cheaply, more efficiently and more justly. Most people scoff at such things, call people with my beliefs idiots or fantastical dreamers, but they acted the same way when people like Locke presented the ideas to begin with, which people like Jefferson and Washington took up later to form the greatest experiment the world had seen - the monarchists were laughing themselves silly thinking that mere mortals could actually govern themselves.
Us Libertarians simply believe that getting rid of government is the next step, but admittedly, we don't know how to get there in today's climate - we have no "New World" far from the tyrannical powers that we can use to take advantage of distance to throw off the yoke. We are in the middle of a full world where most governments have become as tyrannical as the feudal system they replaced.
In the meantime, please, let's keep governments small with as little power as possible
