Sorry, not quite sure of your point, are you suggesting that in Brazil, India and Africa the government takes care of the parentless children and mentally ill? I didn't think so.
The argument you are making is the argument that is always made, that government must step in to act in loco parentis because no one else will. It's demonstrably false, if you study history, but let's assume for the sake of the argument that our social structure has changed so much we can't go back to the way it used to be. Are you saying that we need the federal government as it is now constituted in order to make sure that 9 year old children without parents have a home? Because I think you're wrong. If you, and all the other people who agree with you, want to make sure that the 9 year old kids in your community have a home, why send your money to Washington? Why not send it to the local agency that's going to hire the social worker who's going to find the foster parent with the bed and provide that foster parent with the money to take care of that kid? I guarantee you that it would be cheaper.
I subscribe to the Catholic doctrine called subsidiarity - social problems are best understood and dealt with by those who are closest to them, says a good article in the New Republic.
thenewrepublic.com
Another way to say it is the motto of the Whole Earth magazine, "think globally, act locally." All true social benefits are dispensed at the local level.
But it's more than that. As you mention, I am a lawyer, and despite the fact that I am a Libertarian, I've helped many impoverished people get government benefits because that was my duty. Those benefits don't come from Washington. They come from the county, which gets money from the state, which gets money from Washington. Every step of the way money leaks out, to pay for the multitudinous layers of bureaucracy, and I think that stinks. Regardless of what you or anyone else thinks about compulsory altruism, and I mean you will go to jail unless you pay your taxes no matter how much you object to how they are spent, there is no coherent, rational justification for greasing the federal wheels in order to get the money from the tax payers' pockets into the pockets of the people who will provide food, clothing and shelter to that 9 year old ward of the state.
I resent, and dispute, your insinuation that unless tax payers are forced to fund this incredible edifice, children will go hungry and be unprotected. But I recognize that you've been fed that line all your life, and haven't learned to see it for what it is, a cynical, calculated justification for preservation of the status quo, which benefits, not homeless children, but hungry bureaucrats. |
