Section 8: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; ...... "
As I have reminded you previously, the federalist papers, written by Hamilton and Madison (who wrote the constitution) explicitly go into what they meant by the prhase "promote the general welfare".
They did not mean it as a transfer of funds from one individual to another. They meant it in the most general sense -- general welfare. Not individual welfare.
Look, I can't help it if you refuse to learn history or read up on this subject. But if you're going to make posts on the subject, is it really too much to ask that you educate yourself on the basics before making arrogant responses about it?
Your argument doesn't even have a semblance of validity because you first have not even the most basic education on US constiutional history as you make clear and secondly you apparently have little understanding about the poor in the United States.
I remember back in 1996 when the Welfare Reform act was passed which changed the AFDC program (giving federal money to people who had children who were poor) it was people like you that made the same claims you're making now. Except it didn't happen. The Poverty rate today is lower today than it was in 1996 despite the economy of 1996 being far better than it was today.
What I find appalling about your posts and responses on this topic is that you are so righteous even as you spew ignorance of breathtaking proportions. We don't live in a country where motivated healthy Americans are living in poverty. And yet you act as if we don't keep providing free stuff to the poor that our civilization will come to an end. As if people too unmotivated to just get a freaking job or too incompotent to take part in our economy are suddnely going to organize and bring down our society.
Do you even know the poverty rate of people who work full-time? It's basically non-existent. And there is no excuse for any able bodied person to not have a job.
Today in the NY Times, there is a letter about this very point. The letter ends with this:" it's no coincidence that the Roman Empire had low taxes, small government, enormous concentration of wealth and overextended military at the time of its collapse"
Yes and thanks for demonstrating your ignorance again. The Roman Empire had massively high taxes and a huge beauracracy. The Roman Empire has no analogy n the United States. People who actually debate these topics who are informed never would bring up such poor analogy. (Do you even know what % of our GDP is spent on the military? Oh, of course not, that would require that you educate yourself on a topic you're discussing).
Here, I'll even post the chart on it for you:
A pidly % of our GDP goes into military.
Try picking up a book on the history of the Roman Empire to at least learn different educated hypothesis's on what caused it to slowly disintegrate.
the letter also points out this: " according to the CBO, the after-tax income of the top 1% rose 228% from 1979 through 2005 while middle-class earnings remained flat".
And? AND what? Do you know what causes income disparity in the first place?
Do you know what causes disparity in general?
If you have three runners: One an olympic long distance runner. The other the average American. And the last an incredibly out of shape obese man. What do you think will be the distance difference between them over time?
Ut oh, the olympic runner's distance versus the average runner increased by 228%. That must be bad. We should tie a rope to him to help drag the other two guys. Then it'll be more "fair".
ThinkAloud, you really need to quit thinking in terms of ideology and start thinking for yourself. Think about why things are the way they are free from politics.
