”Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”—James Madison
I just thought I’d throw those two quotes above out there so you’d know what James Madison, the “Father” of our Constitution, the guy who wrote most of it, thought about a government welfare state. There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution that gives the federal government the right to spend one thin dime, much less trillions, on charity, even to their own constituents, much less to foreigners. But, it’s really a moot point; nobody in Washington, D.C., especially in Congress, pays the least bit of attention to what the Constitution authorizes them to do. But it’s always interesting to know what our Founding Fathers intended.
There is no decent person on this earth who denies that those who have the financial ability should help the “needy poor.” Both Old and New Testaments abound with commands and examples to help the “poor” and less fortunate. That is not, nor has it ever been, in dispute. Good people help those in need. That’s not the question. The question is, HOW should they do it? To our Founders, it was not a function of government. Madison wasn’t a cold-hearted monster; he just didn’t believe that the government could handle charity as effectively as other organizations in society. To forcefully take the hard-earned money of one person and give it to someone who hasn’t earned it is not “charity.” “Forced charity” is a contradiction of terms. Charity is a virtue and should be done voluntarily. The government takes money from one person, by force through taxes, and gives that money to others, who have no right to it. That’s what thieves do. The Commandment is not “Thou shalt not steal, unless a majority in Congress vote you can.” “A wise and frugal government….shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned” (Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801). Charity, to be virtuous, is to be voluntary.
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But, of course, handing out government money is the primary way politicians buy votes and get into office. They’ve known that from time immemorial, and American politicians are no different.
How successful has government welfare been? There are a few facts that stare us in the face.
The national government is currently over $37 trillion in debt, and has also spent untold trillions, in the last 60+ years in a “war against poverty.” Many state governments are also deeply in debt. Yet, we have more people sleeping on the streets than at any time in our history, hundreds of millions in Africa and elsewhere are still on the verge of starvation—i.e., we haven’t solved the “world hunger” problem—and the American poverty rate still hovers between 11 and 13%, depending upon whose figures are consulted, and has never been under 10%. Both Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams (two black economists) have argued that welfare has destroyed the black family in America. With an illegitimacy rate of nearly 70%, that is indeed a recipe for poverty and self-destruction. It’s not really surprising that so many inner cities in America are cesspools of drugs, theft, and murder.
But, constitutional or not, successful or not, the current system isn’t going to change. It’s just easier to let bureaucrats do it, decide where the money goes, and take their cut, regardless of how much money is wasted, how many lives are destroyed. The government will continue doing it because it, well, it spends trillions of our dollars buying our votes. And the Democrats, of course, want more. They always want to raise taxes for the sole purpose of buying more votes and staying in power. “The rich should pay their fair share!” Yes, they should. We all should.
What we never hear is somebody effectively defining what a “fair share” is. How much is that? Joe Biden said he wouldn’t raise taxes on anybody making under $400,000, but where did he get that figure? He just, totally arbitrarily, plucked it out of thin air. “$400,000.” He could have used $300,000, or $500,000, or $2 billion—it was a totally random number. But he was trying to buy votes.
A truly “fair” tax code would be everybody paying the same percentage, say, 5%. Why should Elon Musk pay a higher percentage of his income in taxes than I do just because he makes more? Is that “fair”? No, it’s not. “Equity” is “fair,” but only applies to men who wear dresses and use lipstick, not to bread-earners.
Here are some numbers (and these differ slightly depending upon the source, but they are all pretty close): the top 1% of wage earners earn 26% of all income and pay at least 40% of all taxes (depending upon the source). The bottom 50% of all wage earners make 10% of all income and pay 2% of all taxes. That doesn’t really sound very fair to me, but politics is never about fairness.
I do find it interesting that the ones who shout the loudest about the rich not paying their “fair share” (Congressmen) are the very people who write the tax code in the first place. If it’s not fair, why don’t they write a fair one? But, folks, this has nothing to do with a “fair” tax code. And it isn’t about paying off the $37 trillion national debt, either. If Congress took every dime of Elon Musk’s money, it wouldn’t pay off 1% of the national debt. They wouldn’t use it for that anyway. They’d just create more programs, more dependency, more debt, more corruption.
This is about power, totally, 100%, about power. The abuse of power. And money buys power because money buys votes.
And, no, I have no answer. Do you?
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