Christian "purpose" and "meaning" in life.

[Lek]

The bible says "do not steal". I agree that that paying taxes for services for the common good is a good thing and Jesus did say we should pay our taxes. What is wrong is taking money from one group of people to redistribute it to another group. Social security did help lower the poverty rate for seniors. Of course, I don't know what is going to happen when the system goes broke. The problem now is the group with the highest poverty rate is the younger working age group. Before social security families took care of their aging parents and relatives. Seniors were poor because they had little income, but most were taken care of by family. I believe our welfare system has led to the destruction of families and created a permanent welfare class. Show me how Johnson's "war on poverty" has done anything but increase the national debt. Compare our poverty rate now to the rate in 1964 and see if it's worth the trillions upon trillions of dollars poured into black holes. I still have to listen to the statistics about how many children go to bed hungry every night. Extreme amounts of the money contributed by taxpayers to these programs have been wasted, misappropriated, taken by fraud or just plain stolen and, yes, spent on stupid wars.

The problem, as you spell out in the last sentence, is that the money we are taxed is not used appropriately. It has been wasted on overbloated defense spending. It has been misappropriated by giving welfare to corporations and the wealthy and religious organizations instead of the people who actually need it. It has been taken by the fraud of politicians, and the supporters of those politicians, who insist that it's okay to let people starve and have no healthcare. It is necessary because those same people encourage corporations to pay low wages (and steal some of what's left). And, stupid wars.

The problem is not that we have a welfare system, but that people like you have enabled others to a: make the welfare state even more necessary and b: make the welfare state as ineffective as you can possibly manage.

The problem is that conservative politicians are, out of equal parts greed and spite, working hard to make the lives of the hardest working as miserable and gainless as possible, and that they are enabled by conservative voters, millions of whom suckle off the government tit and don't want to share it.

The problem is you, and those who think like you.

I should have known it was those evil Republican conservatives and me who are at fault.