“Letting people be” and only having the military and the police means a return to a feudal system, though at least they had law courts. That means almost no one, especially women, being able to better themselves, starting with getting a good education. You can’t afford it, your kids not only don’t get educated, they have to go out to work from an early age. People are exploited. There’s no standard weights and measures, no currency as a means of exchange, no regulations requiring cleanliness in food production, no one to build or maintain roads and bridges let alone to a certain standard etc etc etc. If that’s what you like, there are still countries run like that and I suggest you go and live in one instead of your safe, comfortable, US existence that you clearly don’t appreciate. But hey, you won’t have to pay much tax.

Once you get beyond the armed forces and the police, it’s not at all obvious that political entanglement is necessary, much less preferable. For instance, over two-thirds of American firefighters are privately-organized volunteers. On the other hand, our government-monopoply school systems are a disaster.

As importantly, what’s “better for society”, or what “makes the world a nicer place” are matters of judgement and conscience, matters about which people hold diametrically opposed views. If the goal is fairness, the fairest thing is to keep politics out of it and let people be.

Really? My guess is the feeling is mutual. I can’t imagine they’d be willing to pay, even for such an enlightened specimen.

Alabama didn’t “produce” any of those people. They happen to have been born there, that’s it; no great achievement being born, or becoming pregnant for that matter. Then “they” did something with their lives, but that has nothing to do with Alabama (except Harper Lee, since she used the culture/geography as an artistic backdrop). All 50 states could assemble such a list. Either way, pecan groves and Mercedes-Benz plants aside, you couldn’t pay me to live in a state rife with theocratic leanings and an unenlightened entrenched republican government.

But it is about more social fairness – that’s the point. People getting paid fair wages for their work, getting holiday pay, sick pay etc, children not working, all children getting an education, police forces, fire brigades, even government military. All those things are socialist type ideas. We are all on a spectrum. Somewhere like China has a lot more socialist things than the US, but both have them. Communism wouldn’t work, extreme socialism doesn’t work, especially when you have really bad management like in Venezuela, but a certain amount done well is good, and better for a country than not having it.

It is better, for example, for a business to be able to pick employees from a pool of educated, healthy people, for it to be easy for them to get to work because of good roads and transport etc. It is better for people to pay a small part of their wages towards things like police and fireman and we all contribute to those things even of we don’t use them because it’s better for society and it makes the world a nicer place to be.

“those who complain about big government are the ones who take the most from it”

But that’s just it — it’s not a fact. It’s an unsubstantiated insinuation that does not hold up to scrutiny, as I commented above.

Of course living standards are higher in every respect today than a year ago, a decade ago, and a century ago. That’s thanks to the awesome power of free enterprise — no thanks to politics, and certainly not socialist politics.

On your last point, two things: [1] Recall that your original comment impugned private charities and accused them of wholesale religious discrimination. That’s a reprehensible charge that I call on you to either substantiate or retract. And it has nothing to do with Trump in any event. [2] Evangelicalism is not my thing, but I’ve never heard of most of the characters you have banged on about, and I am very skeptical that any knowledgeable unbiased* observer would describe any of them as “leaders” of that movement. (*For the record that excludes haters and ax-grinders like PFAW).

I’ll delete it shortly to get rid of confusion. Thanks for letting us know.

Quite honestly, I can’t be bothered checking how accurate all this is. I think the figures are probably correct but it doesn’t change the fact that those who complain about big government are the ones who take the most from it.

Just like teenage pregnancy rates, abortion rates, STD rates, and divorce rates are higher in the Bible Belt states.

And people are better off than they were in the days before there was any social spending. Just check out the history books for what happened to people who lost their jobs or their homes in 1850.

And the other comment of yours I need to respond to about looking after a bad Christian before a good atheist. How about all the looking after that Donald Trump gets from all those Evangelicals, though imo the leadership at least of the Evangelicals are bad Christians themselves.

Sorry, here is the correct link. Please disregard the incorrect link above.

https://youtu.be/PKm0eRfFFfo

Interesting. So you’re saying there’s a correlation between low income tax revenues – and low income? Between low income and “negative social outcomes”? Between negative social outcomes and income redistribution? Isn’t that all tautological? (And BTW, if we still have “negative social outcomes” after decades of massive income redistribution, wouldn’t the rational conclusion be that income redistribution is counterproductive?)

But I really hate to see you resort to that leftist canard about some states supposedly “accepting” a disproporionate share of federal “assistance”. Doesn’t hold water.

First, the phenomenon is more accurately described as a disparity on the revenue side, not spending. No federal income tax revenue comes from low-income people, while most comes from a relatively small population that’s heavily concentrated in a few enclaves in a few blue states. The so-called “progressive” structure of the income tax, combined with the geographic concentration of income, means that the states with all the rich people will always be net “donors” compared with everybody else — even if spending were uniformly distributed.

Then another trick beloved of lefties: Talk about total outlays as if the whole ball of wax amounts to welfare — effectively lumping nuclear subs with food stamps. But if you look at actual social assistance and direct grants, and exclude procurement contracts, salaries and retirement, then you find that Alabama actually receives fewer dollars per capita than big blue states:

Vermont…. 5,773
New York…. 5,736
Massachusetts…. 5,354
Connecticut…. 4,887
New Jersey…. 4,836
California…. 4,310
Alabama…. 4,306

Another myth busted.