Good Evening Ribit!
Obviously we differ on a few minor details.
I assume that government of the people, by the people and for the people is capable of more than your dreary estimation of humankind.
Everything government spends is the redistribution of funds collected through taxation. Obviously all taxpayers do not receive benefits equal to their payments.
By it's nature government is on a tax and spend basis.
The redistribution of income is a predicate power which has always been used to provide for the common welfare.
The simplistic and rather idiotic repetition of old conservative crap might please you, but it quite obviously does not address the problems being faced by the United States in this 21st Century.
If government could raise taxes on the poor to increase benefits to the poor then your system would be inherently equal and satisfy your obvious equitable desires.
Government is based upon the belief that society can be improved to the benefit of all.
In the middle of the greatest economic conflagration since the great depression, surely the people of the United States can find the largesse to help the few million Americans who cannot find gainful employment.
The pain of this economic disaster does not fall on geriatrics like you and I who are on the dole getting our cardboard checks from the Treasury.
Reducing the size of government, taxing less, and diminishing public services is a prescription for a greater and greater disaster.
The poor we fail to help today will guarantee more poverty later.
Government is about solutions, not echoing the answers of the past that have not worked.
You don't have to be very bright to advocate a Machiavellian attitude towards your fellow countryman.
If you have no feeling for your fellow man I assure you that participatory democracy within this Republic is not going to be your cup of tea.
American democracy is evolving towards a fairer and more just society.
Buy some incontinence pads, pour yourself a warm cup of tea and watch how America solves it's problems.
Grumpy old mem are not going to be part of the solution.
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