No, I'm not in favour of the government giving anyone benefits. But if they ARE going to give benefits, they should give everyone an equal benefit rather than favouring some. Of course, this then creates the problem you mentioned, and in addition the government could simply reduce tax and give out no benefits; the net result would be the same.

Yes, but is it the governments right to redistribute wealth as it sees fit?

Uhh. I'm against government benefits is that's what you mean.

Incidentally, forced taxation is unconstitutional in the USA; unfortunately the court cases about that all rule in favour of the US government forcibly taxing peoplre.

What "problem" I mentioned?

If the government reduced tax and didn't give out any benefits, then someone who was on a benefit of say $10k, now receives $0 income. The "net result" is completely and utterly different.

The problem of unfair taxes/benefits.

The NET result is the same. Certain individuals may be better off or worse off.

What this really boils down to is
Do we want unemployment and very progressive taxes, or do we want emplyment and balanced taxes?

Instead of worrying about the guy with $0 we should give him a job

In New Zealand it's hard to give everyone jobs because of artificial wage floors such as the minimum wage ($13 NZD currently), high taxes, and progressive taxes. My boss would be able to hire 3-4 more people if there was no minimum wage; he can't though, which means 3-4 people without jobs.

Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't say anything about that in my post.

The NET result is almost certainly far worse.

I've seen comments from many small business owners that the slump in the early 1990's was worse than what we're currently going through. That was after Ruth Richardson significantly slashed benefits; money that people used to buy goods and services in the community. The economy is a money-go-round, if you suddenly throw a whole lot of people off the ride, there's less money circulating and everyone suffers (except those at the very top who already have a lot of capital and can rent-seek).

You should have watched the documentary on child poverty that was on TV a few weeks ago. These children don't have enough to eat and suffer very poor health because of overcrowding in houses and lack of money to buy food. They're unable to learn anything in school, and a whole new generation grows up who hardly have a chance of leaving the poverty trap.

If you suddenly drop these families down to receiving no benefit at all, you're going to make this problem worse, not better. If you think having an expanding underclass is the "same NET result" then you're insane.

You're imaginging a world where EVERYTHING stays the same except the minimum wage. Sorry, doesn't work like that. With a lower minimum wage, all people who currently earn minimum wage and buy from your employer will have less money to spend. Your employer might now be able to hire 3-4 more people, but he may not need to if his business has dropped because people don't have enough money to buy his goods any more.

I suppose as you're not an american this is excusable, but taxation is completely constitutional:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
See Article 1
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27.html
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."

The favorite Republican dogma is that tax breaks to the rich "creates jobs". I do not know how they came up with this crazy piece of idiotic logic, but it seems to have worked with other conservatives (what a surprise!). And I still haven't seen one shred of evidence to suggest that tax breaks to the rich will create jobs. Or evidence that suggests capitalism has a magic hand that fixes everything.

I'm not American and I knew that.

Jack's problem is that he hates all governments everywhere and thinks that government shouldn't do anything except defend it's populace from war, apparently. These sorts of anti-government types loves to believe that whatever the government does that they don't agree with is unconstitutional, regardless of the facts.

I'm just curious where the money actually goes (besided their pockets) because they have to spend it eventually right?

No, actually this statistical analysis shows that the rich tend to save their tax cuts, not spend it.

'Eventually' is the problem. It's also what they spend it on.

Go give $1,000 to a poor family and watch what they spend it on. Most likely food, clothing, probably a little on some entertainment and to pay bills.

Give $1,000 to someone who is wealthy and they'll just put it in the bank, or spend it on an overseas holiday (money leaves the country) or on a luxury item of some sort. The purveyors of luxury items themselves tend to be wealthy, so you don't get much of a "trickle down" effect at all.

Just look at what happens to a community when Walmart opens up and drives all the mom and pop stores out of business. All the wealth gets shipped out of town and eventually ends up in the Walton's bank account. But the mom and pop shops would have kept the money circulating in the community.

Having said all that, I do believe that rich people sitting on all this money do actually help to dampen down inflation. I believe this isn't something that is given much thought when people talk about redistributing wealth through taxation.

Saving is deferred consumption. The money will 'eventually' be spent. The question is how long, and where. Although frankly there's so much money floating around in the world that it can't ever really be spent; I suspect most of it will just evaporate in bank crashes and failed companies. Similar to how a lot of it was created out of thin air by fractional reserve banking in the first place.

I suppose we've found the real problem with a conservative plan then haven't we? People aren't trustworthy.
but giving money to the people on the bottom doesn't give them their mom and pop store back either

It's not a problem with "a conservative plan", it's a problem with humans in general. Greed it the problem; wanting to have more of something than is necessary to meet your needs. People just want more and more, even at the expense of others.

Taxation and welfare policies are a brute-force and clumsy way to help ameliorate the impact of greed for the betterment of society as a whole. In an ideal world we would hardly need much taxation or welfare at all.

No, but you know what does? Sufficient regulation to prevent stores like Wal Mart coming into an area and driving the competition out. Minimum wage laws ensure that stores like Wal Mart have to pay their employees sufficient money to live on and this in itself helps to slow down the money-vacuum process because more money will stay in the local community. When more money stays in the local community, it gives more chance of mom and pop stores being able to compete with the bigger rivals (generally competing on quality and service, not price).

Just seems like everyone can identify the problem-Greed, but noone knows how to really fix it. Sure we can find ways to treat the symptoms, but they aren't solutions.

I don't quite agree with this. I don't believe there is definitive evidence to suggest that humans are inherently greedy, and to the contrary, I think the ball is the court that humans are influenced by their environment. Psychological need certainly makes a play here. But not being able to fulfill those needs encourages the development of greedy humans.

On the purely evolutionary level, having more than your neighbour means you're more likely to survive. Normally this would only be borne out when times get tough however and you're in direct competition with them - usually co-operating leads to better outcomes for all.

But in our modern society where broadly speaking, more money = more fun, where communities are far too large for everyone to know each other personally, there is no incentive to share and share-alike. Being greedy (within the law) is ultimately unpunished and brings it's own rewards of more money = more fun. People are more or less evolutionarily hard-wired to maximise pleasure and enjoyment where possible.

Agreed, I just wanted to make the distinction between environmental and evolutionary factors so people don't get the impression that the system is not at fault.