Welfare - are you for or against it and why?

[theVOID]

Right... right. The government wastes resources.

Are you denying the fact that government spending, especially in big governments, is less efficient than personal spending? What a laugh, someone purchasing their own insurance for instance is a method that involves far less bureaucracy, so Is someone giving to a local shelter.

We don't have unlimited resources to throw at our problems so we should be making the most effective use of what we have - government simply isn't the right choice for a myriad of things that they are involved in.

They spend all of our money on private jets

You've clearly missed the point, a valid comparison would be the difference between someone purchasing his own private jet and someone paying a government to purchase a jet for him.

Besides, what is wrong with someone buying a jet if they have the money for it?

and faulty investments

That was caused by a state guarantee, limiting the liability of the loan providers and providing an opportunity for reckless investment, if fannie and freddie weren't being guaranteed security on the loans by the government they wouldn't have bought sub prime loans in the first place because the risks are simply too great, government makes giving loans for housing attractive through subsidies and guarantees and suddenly these loans aren't untenable. This is what gave loan brokers the opportunity to make as many loan agreements as possible with people who couldn't afford them because they could simply resell the liabilities to fannie and freddy while taking a healthy cut of the transaction.

and toxic assets in a gambling attempt to turn this democratic nation into a plutocracy.

They didn't buy toxic assets so much as the assets became toxic when people realised the housing bubble was going to burst.

Also, these banks would have paid for their recklessness if the government hadn't bailed them out. The recession would have been sharper but afterwards the economy would be in a much more balanced state and the governments using these bailouts wouldn't now be in more debt than ever before.

Totally unlike that one guy - Bernie Maydoff or however you spell his name.

He's a criminal who ran a ponzy scheme, that's an entirely different situation, the greed is the only common factor, Bernie didn't get to piggy back off government stupidity.

I guess Void and I disagree yet again.

To me 'need' equals "Can't provide for themselves" not "Won't provide for themselves".

The goal is if welfare is restricted to those people private charity could likely handle most of the need which would save on government bureaucracy (and subsequently dollars), however, Charities aren't always efficient spenders, especially not at national or global levels, so the local organisations could take the job and provide for these people. People would also need to be taxed a great deal less, in a lot of nations welfare makes up almost half of government spending. The government would still need a safety cushion in case funding levels were low from donations (which is always a possibility), but it's ultimately a more efficient use of resources.