My opinion? I think there are some aspects of the system that can help the poor more, and some that should be gotten rid of. Programs such as welfare should not be entilement(I know they're not technically, but they often function as if they are) programs, everyone cannot go out there and make tons of money but everyone can at least put in a 40 hour work week. Unless you're physically infirm (in which case I think the government has an obligation to help you), you should be helping yourself. In my own extended family, I know of members (JW's, nontheless) who are on welfare, living off of taxpayers when they could get off their lazy asses and earn a living. I also know of people in my congregation who are on welfare and who full time pioneer as a result . Hell, I even remember there being a part in meeting where a sister said she was able to pioneer because she was able to take advantage of gov't assistance programs, and she encouraged others to do the same! Situations like that just get on my nerves.
However, I do think the government should provide universal health care and (quality) education for all its citizens. The poor people aren't going to get off of welfare if they can't read, and it's just inhumane to only provide good healthcare to the rich (or in my case, middle class parents with good union benefits ). The universal health thing would be easy if we tried, the education thing is admittedly a mess. I'm not a big fan of vouchers personally, but I'm also not a parent of a child who's enrolled in a terrible public school. We Americans like to malign and ridicule our other first world nation friends (sometimes fairly ), but virtually all those nations have better public educational systems than we do (and their colleges are affordable), so maybe we need to do what they do on the issue of education. Perhaps we should cut some of the corporate welfare programs to meet that end. I'm as opposed to giving lazy poor people my help as I am irresponsible corporations. If your company goes belly up, it will be replaced by another more efficent one, and the people who lost their jobs will get new ones (with the government helping them out while they get one, as opposed to taking my money and giving it to the corporation so that the CEO's can keep their ridiculous salaries, while the "little guys" get layed off anyway).
As far as taxes are concerned, I agree with you guys partly. Living in NYC, my parents pay ridiculous federal, state and city taxes. I think if we clean up government and it is run more efficently, taxes could be cut by 10% across the board. As far as rich people paying too much taxes, that's baloney. The top 10% of Americans earn 90% of the nations wealth, so I'm pretty sure the top 50% are pretty close to earning 96% of the wealth, which would make their percentage of the tax burden fair. Besides, a $52,000 household is not in the same tax bracket as Bill Gates (though as I said, we're all being overtaxed right now anyway due to government inefficency). As far as third world countries are concerned, I think rich countries can help them by forgiving some of their debt. We first world nation guys can't seriously expect these countries to start building viable economies if they have their arms tied by the IMF till the next ice age. In exchange for debt forgiveness, those third world countries would have to clean up their corrupt governments, as the situation would only regress back if that isn't done.
