>>19
You obviously have no clue about the source of wealth and the cause of the present state of poverty.
Wealth don't grow on trees or drop from the sky and appear randomly in the world. It is produced by people, through hard work. Every person have their own goals to pursue in life, and they work hard to achieve it. If someone is in poverty, it might not be entirely be their own fault, but it sure as hell isn't anybody else's fault unless they stole from him.
The very implication of welfare is that people who are richer must always have somehow stole from those that are poorer. And that unstated implication is what serves as the moral justification for welfare. The people who believe this have no clue about the source of wealth.
The function for wealth is such:
(raw material) x (invention/innovation) = wealth
Raw material, like oil, is static, so this factor cannot change. What changes is technology (invention/innovation..etc.). A simple example would be a new engine that can pump out twice the amount of power than the old ones from the same amount of gasoline. Therefore, more wealth is produced from the same amount of raw materials.
And what's the source of technology? The human mind.
That is the source of wealth. People (baring criminals) MAKES their fortune. Without them, their wealth wouldn't have existed in the world.
When you take WITHOUT CONSENT the wealth created by one man and give it to another, you are essentially destroying both of their lives. It is a wrong political action and one of the consequence is that it will act to discourage the person who created the wealth to create more, and it will act to discourage the person who need wealth to create them. You are essentially going against justice by rewarding bad choices and punishing good ones. Another important consequence is that welfare steals private wealth that could have gone into investments that would have created many more times its original worth of new jobs, thus decreasing employment rate from what could have been. Those are just some of reasons why why welfare never solves poverty, but in fact, breeds more.
As for the cause of present state of poverty, when I say if a person is in poverty, it might not entirely be his own fault, but it sure as hell isn't anybody else's, UNLESS THEY STOLE FROM HIM, there is somebody that steals from the poor, the government.
There are many examples, welfare been one of them. I'll choose another one, the minimum wage. When a person is willing to work for $7 a hour on a certain job and a employer is willing to hire people for that job on that wage but no more, and the government steps in and says, "Nope, you gotta pay him more or no employment.", what do you think happens? That person is robbed of his job and the employer is robbed of an employee. Translate this to the national level and you will have a rise in unemployment followed by a rise in poverty.
There are many other examples I can list, but the fact is the government is the biggest cause of today's poverty. On the issue of welfare, there is no justification for welfare both morally and practically. Morally it is wrong and the consequence practically is that it does not solve poverty but causes more. You say your value system is simple, and that you choose your first duty as the protection for the weak. Then know that what you are arguing for does no such thing but ironically causes more suffering for the weak.