To a great degree it was the case historically, and is currently, and would be more the case currently if it wasn't for government efforts (which crowd out some private efforts) and high government taxes (which reduce private resources for charity, and also create an impression in people that they already gave).
I'm not saying you don't get more assistance to the less well off, by doing it through forcible taxation and government redistribution, you clearly do. OTOH you also get a lot of fraud, and you get dependency traps where the cutoff of benefits, and the kick in of taxes, and mean that people see little benefit from returning to work, or from improving their work position to make more. If you count the cut off of benefits as a tax (it isn't but has similar disincentive effects), the effective marginal tax rate is more than that for any other group and can be over 100% at certain income levels for those who are receiving all the benefits they are legally entitled to. And even outside of that taking from those who earn more to give to those who don't earn, disincentives wealth creation on both ends.
I'm not saying we should get rid of social programs. Just as they cause problems they also relieve serious problems for a lot of people. But its important to recognize the problems as well, to try to minimize them, and to look skeptically at expansions of government that could expand them in scope or intensity. |
