Does Government (Democrat) “Charity” REALLY Help?

There is little question but that Republicans are seldom as strongly motivated as are many Democrats when it comes to the exertion of political power during the periods when they (we) do hold it. Of course, one of the significant things about Republicans is that most of them (us) oppose "Excessive Government Power and Control".

The primary services that we really want and need for our national government to provide are a military to protect us from threats from outside our country and a policing and legal system to protect us from threats from inside our country that exceed the authority of local and state policing and legal regulation.

Granted, there are very large numbers of other “services” that are currently being provided on a regular basis by our national government, but the author is raising the question as to whether or not many of these “services” could be provided more effectively and at less cost by state or local governments or the private sector. That might also result in the elimination of a number of them. Our federal government rarely, if ever, does things efficiently and at low cost.

One group of the “services” that might well be handled much more efficiently on a state or local basis can be defined as “helping the poor”. According to the author’s brief on-line research our national government currently spends some 1.1 trillion dollars annually “helping the poor”. Although this may “sound good” when initially considered is it not fairly likely that “helping the poor”, especially when done on a national basis, is very inefficient and, likely results in making poor people dependent on government and, by doing so, places them under government “control” for most if not all of their lives.

Be that as it may (above), the Democrat Party’s claim of “helping the poor” has long been an effective “tool” in attracting a significant percentage of that Party’s general membership, thinking that they are, indeed, “helping” people. However, it is this author’s opinion that for many of the various individuals that have actually been in charge of and run the Democrat Party over the years, that “controlling” as opposed to “helping” was, and still is, their primary motive. Also, consider the simple fact that the taking of money by the force of taxation from the general population and using that money to, in effect, support and control a segment of our citizenry can only result in a reduction of potential economic growth. At least some of that money would have otherwise generated the jobs, services and products that such economic growth creates.