Come on TheRealMafoo, unable to explain why your feelings on certain matters should be forced on everyone else, you could have atleast done us the favor of ignoring the topic after you found yourself in an unfavorable spot.

That way, you leave us with a glimmer of hope that you may have actually learned something, or atleast thought about your opinion in a different light. But now we know that all of our debate is in vain, and like a pesterous bird that only knows one song, you keep saying the same thing over and over.

The problem with "Helping" the poor in the way the government tends to do it is that it tends to translate into the poor being worse off in the long run ... The classic example of this is that welfare receipients tend to need "Help" because they lack education and experience to get a decent job, and yet most wellfare systems around the world prevent people from building experience or getting an education, and the longer they're on welfare the more dependant on welfare they become.

Another problem is how unfair the "Help" becomes ... I know a woman who recently found out that there are drug addicts which long criminal records who have been given a much better appartment than she has that is fully furnished, and she has a university education and works 2 jobs to pay her bills.

The same problems exist with corporate welfare also ... Canada's government is forced to bailout Air Canada every year because people constantly claim that Canada needs its own large national airline; except there are smaller airlines which are run better who could be more successful at being a National Airline than Air Canada is, but they can't grow quickly in these ventures because every time Air Canada runs into trouble the government bails them out. Therefore the airline industry is worse off for bailing out airliners to protect the industry ...

To see unfairness all you have to do is look at the handling of automobile companies by the current presidential administration ... Large banks and pension funds buy bonds because they're secured debt and they have rights to the assets of the company before all other debt holders which makes them very safe investments. The Obama administration arbitrarily changed the rules to benefit the autoworkers unions. People who "Did the right thing" and saved their money in lower return safe investments are having their money taken away from them so that a union, who's unfunded liabilities and insane wages lead to the destruction of the company they work for, can benefit.

I don't think they are worse off Squirrel, if you look at the poverty levels of various "Welfare state" nations, they have lower poverty than the US

I think you missed what I was saying ...

As people get older they tend to get better paying jobs with more responsibility, and by the time someone is in their late 20's/early 30s they generally don't have problems making a living. Most people do struggle, and live in undesireable conditions (share house with 4 people) until they reach this point but they get there anyways. Giving someone welfare to give them the ability to make a living without working results in these people not working, and when they hit their 30s and 40s they still can't make a living because they still lack the education and experience; at the same time, most of their peers who did the really crappy jobs through their 20s will be financially better off than they are for being on welfare.

You also keep mentioning "Welfare States" without considering that other factors may be influencing the statistics ...

Most European "Welfare States" have had a much lower birthrate for awhile, which has resulted in a much older workforce, and when you double the number of workers above the age of 35 at the expense of workers under 35 you will have a dramatically better poverty rate.

There definately forms of 'helping' that do worse in the long term.  However, healthcare and education are not one of those.  Healthy people are more productive workers, which benefits both the individual and the overall economy.  The same argument goes for education.

In regards to the bottom quote, its my opinion that both union workers and CEOs make more money than they are worth.

Lets take France, yes they do have a slightly older population than the US does, but not that much more, median age in France is 39, in US its 36.7, the reason is that they have been offsetting much of the decline in fertitlity rates with immigration, not to mention in the last year fertitlity rates in France have shot up, with birth rates in Metropolitant france at 2 children for every woman.  Not to wntion having an older population, with longer life expectancies. means that you have to pay out more old age benefits.

Sure, I will explain, so we can go around again with nothing other then just some arguments between us with nothing gained...

I am sorry you can't see the difference between protection and providing.

Providing is when you take the labor of one person, and use it for the sole purpose of benefiting another.

For example: people need to eat. protection would be to make sure laws are in place that don't restrict anyones ability to get a job based on uncontrolled circumstances. If your white, black, young, old, man, woman, whatever, you can not be denied employment.

Providing that protection is universal. I pay taxes, and I get that protection. Now, if the government just gave someone food (or anything for that matter), they would first have to take it from someone else.

The government taking from one man, for the sole purpose of giving it to another is wrong. It's a loss of freedom. If 10% of my salary goes to these kinds of entitlements, it means I am working in the service of others for 200 hours a year (or a little over a month). That's wrong.

Your argument that you don't want to pay for an F22 is a different argument. I assume you feel we should have some level of protection, and the people of this country should pay for it. And that it's the governments responsibility to collect funds for this purpose. The issue you have, is how efficiently we do it.

I also think the military spends way to much money. That's different then saying I don't think we should have a military at all.

Edit:

Something to remember when talking about entitlements: The government owns nothing. They have no ability to generate revenue. For the government to give anything to anyone, they first have to take it from someone.

Education is a very different situation from most forms of government social programs ...

There is a point where rapid diminishing returns follow with education (which moves over time), and there are certain types of education that provide little benefit, but a well educated workforce leads to a stronger and more advanced economy which benefits everyone. The money spent on giving a child a quality education from kindergarden through highschool is easily made up over their career because they're able to do more work of higher value. The combination of globalization and the continued ability of man to automate jobs ensures that every generation will need a better education than the previous generation to maintain or improve their standard of living; and this will probably be true for the next several generations.

Healthcare is a different beast than education ... The vast majority of healthcare costs are associated with preventable illness and bureaucracy (regardless of who provides the service), and the growth in costs over the past 60 years have motsly been related to the cost of delivering better healthcare to people (better diagnosis, treatment and an ability to treat more diseases). Until our mindset on health changes, and we can control the costs, we're on a path where healthcare will be unaffordable or unavialable to people regardless of who provides the services.

Protection verse Providing:

Your definition of providing falls under everything the government does that you consider protecting.  When you pay taxes that go to the police force, your labor and wealth is providing a service for other people.  I can copy whatever argument you made and replace one word (from police to food or military to healthcare), and you would immediately go from approving of that statement to disaproving of it.

The only way your arguments makes any sense is if you dont want to live in a civilized society at all, so that you dont have to worry about your labor benefitting another person.  There is probably a large forest or national park near you where you can attempt to this.

Government Ownership:

You said the government owns nothing.  This is false, as the government owns everything.  The United States government owns everything from Florida to Alaska, and grants rights to its citizens (and even foriegn citizens) on what they can do with that land.  It has always been this way, from early civilization kingdoms to modern day democracies. 

If I own land in North Dakota and I want to join Canada, I am not free to do so because even though there is a piece of paper that the government gave me saying that I own this piece of land and what rights I have on it, the United States government owns everything inside a certain line of latitude because of a treaty it signed with Great Britian many years ago.  Thus, you dont own land anymore than the government says you own land, and you cant do anything with that land that the government says you cant, and you cannot transfer land from one government to another or from one person to another without approval of the government.

Your world view is off so I expect you to argue this point, so think about it this way: 

If I go to your house and ask you if you own it, you will say yes I own this house and the land it is on.  I then ask how do you know you own it, and you present me a document that says that you own it.  I say how did you get that document, and you say the government gave it to me.  I then ask to buy the property and you accept, so we go to the courthouse and are required to get the government's approval of the transaction.  So who really holds power over the land?

While there are certainly challenges which threaten the long-term viability of all health care systems, there's strong evidence that single-payer health systems are less threatened than the mostly-private health insurance system of the United States. Here's a study which found that bureaucratic costs are far lower in Canada than they are in the United States:

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/349/8/768

"In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least $294.3 billion in the United States, or $1,059 per capita, as compared with $307 per capita in Canada. After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada. Canada's national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent; the overhead among Canada's private insurers was higher than that in the United States (13.2 percent vs. 11.7 percent). Providers' administrative costs were far lower in Canada."

I'm afraid that I don't have any hard evidence that a single-payer system is more efficient at delivering preventive care, though there are theories that single-payer systems improve preventive care by reducing the financial barriers to people going in to get a minor problem checked out, rather than waiting until it becomes a serious problem in order to save the cost of a visit to the doctor.

One last curiousity on health care. The United States  government actually spends more on health as a share of GDP than the government of Canada does, while private US health expenditures are three times as high.

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