I'm afraid you misunderstand me or rather I haven't been clear enough. I'm not talking about government money being handed out to the poor. I'm not talking about welfare, food stamps, heating assistance or HUD. In fact, the only reason I brought taxes up in the first place was to counter the off hand remark you made about violating people's rights by forcibly taking money from them.
Let me be absolutely clear. I'm talking solely about charity. There are thousands of non-profit organizations out there that do great work for those that can't fend for themselves. Why just around here in my little podunk in the woods we have a dozen different charities that are funded by solely on private donations. They hand out food, maintain a shelter for the homeless, another for battered women, a small drug rehabilitation program and the list goes on. I would love to give every dime I have to these people for the great work that they do, however, I don't have a lot of dimes, so I give what I can afford, which is mostly my time. Bill Gates is a busy man with not a lot of time to spare, but he's got a whole lot of money just sitting around doing nothing.
And again, let me be clear. I'm not belittling what Mr. Gates has done. Like I said, I wish more would follow his example.
Charity. Just charity. Money to schools, the Red Cross, battered women ranches, the Salvation Army, make a wish, Jerry's kids, St. Jude's, these organizations all have a pretty good idea how to make it work. How many kids do you think are scamming St. Jude's? How many of those Jerry's kids do you think are playing the system? How many displaced families lost their homes on purpose just to get a quick couple of bucks for free?
I applaud your cynicism. I really do as I'm quite the cynic myself. There are a lot of folks out there who want to take advantage of the system. Fortunately, however, most charity organizations run a pretty tight ship (all Red Cross jokes aside
) and the good they do far, far outweighs the bad, in my opinion.