(December 10, 2016 at 2:35 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Ideally, help for the needy would come strictly from charity rather than the government.
True, but if things were ideal they'd work very differently at almost every level. One reason that government is a useful way to help the needy is the reach that they have and the ability to spread the support more evenly and target it at areas where charity may not be keeping up. They are also able to provide subsidies based on situational needs, in order to help those who need access to doctors and medicine for their children. I'd add that there is oversight and record-keeping to help eliminate fraud and waste, but we have probably heard of too many examples of both of those to trust that the funds are being used efficiently. Still, that's another of the things we'd have in an ideal world. Lacking that, attacking the problem with the tools of charity organizations and government programs will have to do.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
