1. Are you comfortable with progressive taxation and the justifications offered for it?
I'm comfortable with it as long as it isn't so steep as to be confiscatory. My reason is Willie Sutton's. That's me being pragmatic. It's just not practical for everyone to pay equal shares.
As for the justifications offered for it, I'm not sure what they all are. The one I have heard argued, that it's fairer, is utterly bass-ackwards as far as I'm concerned.
2. Are you comfortable with Medicaid and the justifications offered for it?
I am comfortable with Medicaid for the disabled. For the poor, not so much. It sends a non-constructive message and is unstable long term due to an increasing cost/increasing enrollment spiral. Short-term support, as with unemployment compensation, during times of crisis wouldn't bother me.
I do not know what justifications are out there for Medicaid other than we can't leave people dying in the streets. But Medicaid isn't what stops that but rather the requirement that hospitals deal with emergencies so it seems beside the point. Another justification I've heard is that they can't afford medical care on their own. Person A not being able to afford something is hardly a justification for taking money from person B who may have his own unmet desires. That just doesn't hold water, IMO.
3. Are you comfortable with the social security as presently structured and the justifications offered?
As for the retirement program, I would have preferred we not have taken that path but since we have it and to the extent that it's paid for by the eventual recipients, sort of, it's acceptable. It's framed more like an insurance program and isn't (yet) a welfare program so I am comfortable enough.
I'm comfortable with the disability program. Disability is usually a twist of fate. It's probably not practical to deal with this random problem other than at the federal level.
The original justification of enabling people to retire and open up jobs makes some sense. As does supporting the disabled centrally because it's too big a burden on families and not that frequent. The retirement part was not thunk through, though.
But all of the above seem to contradict the assertion above.
SS at least pretends to be something people pay for themselves and in so doing does not contradict the basic values of individual responsibility, not enough to bother me.
Nobody expects the disabled to support themselves. So it's just a question of who supports them. There aren't that many of them so the cost doesn't make a dent when shared nationwide. Might as well be efficient about it.
Progressive taxation, independent of the portion of the budget that supports welfare programs, seems beside the point. Most of the money goes into the commons, not transfer payments. How we share the cost of the commons is another matter.
So I don't see enough contradiction of the assertion to be worth mentioning.
My interest is in not establishing an entitlement mentality that cripples the long term viability of a success culture. I can probably be made comfortable, though, with any welfare program that communicates a charity rather than an entitlement relationship between the government and the recipient. A charity framework makes participating a tad short of fully respectable reducing its appeal as a way of life and thus its growth.
Is it now that you tell me what those alleged larger goods are? |
