jayeff

The implication of your "simple" question is that you would like to keep the taxes you pay for yourself. Fair enough, at least it would be if the economic equation were a simple as you maintain your question is. Your question might also seem less agenda based if not only might you save money by making the lives of the poor more miserable than they are already, but also if it were one of the more significant aspects of your expenditure that offered potential for saving.

Go back 50 years if you like and the statistics are solid right the way through. Every time poverty in this country rises, crime rises and unfortunately some criminals are smart enough to realize how little sense it makes to prey on others no better off than themselves. The numbers are equally solid in illustrating that spending on police does not reduce the crime rate. So forget morality and be strictly practical: would you rather spend some tax dollars and actually help alleviate crime via alleviating poverty, or are you so dead set against the poor that you would rather waste the money on the illusion of security?

That's just one angle. Another is, do you have the slightest idea how much of your taxes and your taxed income will be spent on you and your family's health and education, during your lifetime and how much higher than necessary those expenses are? You don't have to get too deep into the calculations before it becomes obvious that the sum involved is far greater than the small part of your taxes which benefit the poor. So again, is your concern to get the most value from your dollar, or are you simply regurgitating secondhand prejudice?

In short, your question was itself somewhat transparent rhetoric. Foolish too. People rant against the poor as if, should all support be withdrawn, they will simply fade away. Nope. We live in a more-or-less stable, more-or-less law-abiding society solely because the vast majority of our citizens have a vested interest in it staying that way. That's the only reason: not police forces, nor armies and certainly not the inherent goodness of the human animal. If we were foolish enough to take away the limited safety nets which exist, how long do you imagine it would be before millions of people began asking themselves why they should tolerate such a state of affairs?

I suppose we could gun them all down. But then what? Western economies depend on a surplus of demand over supply, so once we have eliminated all of today's poor, the dynamics of our society will be busy creating new poor. Shoot them all too. And so on. Then one day it is your turn...

I'm sorry, but I get p*ssed at the smugness of many middle class people, because another thing the statistics show without question is that since the 1950's far more people are slipping down the economic ladder than climbing up it. Very, very few people any longer succeed in escaping whatever path their parents' economic status put them on. So what is to be smug about? Most are no more responsible for whatever success they enjoy than the poor are for being poor. If we were penalized for failing to match up to reasonable expectations, over 90% of us would be guilty.