Is it fair to make a person go hungry or do without medical care? Is it fair to take half of a person's income away from them?
Our country is wealthy. Our poor are rich by the standards of most of the world. We should be willing and able to take care of those who can't take care of themselves. And in fact, we do. Our system is imperfect and people who need help don't get that help in some cases, maybe many cases. But in a country this large you are not going to make it perfect, no matter how much money you throw at the system.
So given that we have a social safety net in place for food, shelter and medical care, I think the question becomes: how far do we want to go with it? We must decide what we feel is right and moral and meet that standard.
So to look at the question: Is it fair to make a person go hungry or do without medical care? Absolutely not. But how about this question: Is it fair to ALLOW a person to go hungry or ALLOW a person to do without medical care? Is there any circumstance in which we would tell someone "Too bad, you made poor choices, deal with it."?
I think that's a fair question. And maybe the answer should be "no." My answer would be "hell yes." But I'm an evil conservative. However, I don't have a problem with people who disagree with me, and, in fact, if it were possible I would love to live in a world where we could take care of everyone regardless of their choices.
So let's look at the other question: Is it fair to take half a person's income away from them? No? How about 40%? We do that now. What if that person is very rich? We are talking a lot now about making millionaires pay "a little more," and "pitch in." The reality is that they are footing almost the entire bill already. It's a pretty easy Google search to find who pays what:
And from Wikipedia: "According to the IRS, the top 1% of income earners for 2008 paid 38% of income tax revenue, while earning 20% of the income reported. The top 5% of income earners paid 59% of the total income tax revenue, while earning 35% of the income reported. The top 10% paid 70%, earning 46% and the top 25% paid 86%, earning 67%. The top 50% paid 97%, earning 87% and leaving the bottom 50% paying 3% of the taxes collected and earning 13% of the income reported. The Tax Foundation stated that for 2007, the top 1% of earners paid more than the bottom 95% combined."
I am far from a millionaire, but I don't understand the anger directed towards them. Unless they got rich by doing something illegal, why this desire to take their money away?
It doesn't directly benefit me to argue against higher taxes on the wealthy. And I'm not arguing to eliminate progressive tax rates (although I'd love to see a real debate on a "flat tax.") I don't have a fundamental problem with the very poor not paying any taxes. However, when almost half the country bears no part of the burden of paying taxes we have a real problem.
What I'm saying is we take enough money from the people now, including the millionaires. Freeze it where it's at for now. Don't raise or lower any taxes until we make some fundamental decisions about the direction we are going. We need to make some real choices in this country. Big government welfare state or free-market, choices-have-consequences state.
Contrary to the way most liberals portray the choice, the latter does not mean social Darwinism. No rational conservative talks about eliminating safety nets, regardless of the scare tactics of the left. In fact conservative proposals seek to save Medicare and Social Security, not eliminate them. If you are not seeing this, you should broaden your media sources, you are being mislead.
The point I started out trying to make is that "fairness" is the wrong debate when it comes to the direction we want to take our country. It's simply an illusion, an impossible state that has never existed and never will. Pursuing it is like chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, a waste of time and effort.
Let's decide what is necessary to take care of only those who can't take care of themselves and the few other things only the government can do and fund at that level. Period. That is big and expensive enough. Trying to alter reality to make everyone live the same life should be left to the philosophers.
