Call me a dreamer or just plain strange but my hope is a Government that provides NO end-user services (not even national defense, police or education) but plays the role of a giant, powerful, impartial referee overseeing the market participants who compete in offering the products and services people need.
I'll be nice and say dreamer. Governments are made of men. Men have wants. An impartial government is as likely as an impartial media.
Afterthought, what you advocate is not what the founders advocated, I am not one to drape myself around the flag, but so far our country remains the lone superpower. Whether we earned or were just lucky remains a debate, but right now the founders are looking pretty damn smart.
I know someone who is a Supreme Court Judge in a EU country and makes about $50,000/year. He has a hard time being able to afford a nice apartment and a Toyota car, although he is (locally) considered very well off. When did we stop using absolute language in favor or all-relative expressions? Many of our "poor" would be considered almost rich in most parts of the world. Many of them can afford to live at a standard that is enviable in most foreign countries: remember, over half of the world's polulation has no access to clean water. But we don't measure that, we don't document how many more services the bottom quarter of Americans get for free, including education, health care, etc. When Bush signed the truly bipartisan Medicare prescription program, he got almost no credit: why hadn't this multi-billion per year "entitlement" been there much sooner? People never talk about the fact that 5% of Americans pay virtually all taxes in this country. Never a thank you to those of us who provide for everybody. Just the same old wealth re-distribution rhetoric, same old threatening comments that democracy for the liberals means "we're coming over there to take what's left of your money, to fund programs that we all know don't work, but what the heck." When I was in highschool, many of my classmates would tease me that I wanted to go home and study instead of staying out with them to kick a ball around all afternoon. A few years later, a good portion of them, no doubt, believe that it's their "right" to take my "illegal" and "unfair" money that I managed to earn "on the back of the poor". Yes, it's called "working smarter than your competition for 70 hours every week, for many years, and staying out of trouble," but few of them acknowledge that, no doubt. I don't want to sound too selfish, or give the impression that I don't care for the poor, because I do. But, at the same time, there is a reason that some people are getting richer, let's not forget that, not in this country. Oh well
You are speaking as a middle/uppermiddle. The rich avoid taxation, this a fact. FICA stops at 98000 I believe. If anything, you should look upwards, rather than downwards. I know of people who don't work who live better than I do. They are the products of their environment. You and I did not create that environment. Yet we pay for it. Why is that? Don't ask Tyrone, ask Mr. Wellington.
That's basically the corner we've backed ourselves into, and it's not just "the poor" who are voting us there. If you take the total expenditures of the US government and divide it by the number of citizens, then see how many citizens pay that much or more in taxes you will find that 95% of us are moochers. We're getting more government than we are paying for. At this point, a majority of the moochers want even more. They're ready to strangle the golden goose to try to squeeze out a few more eggs. Most everybody thinks they can get something for nothing, and more than a few are fed up paying for it all and it's time they got some back. You cannot have a stable government that takes money from one group to give to another, and gives political power to both groups. Because eventually, one group gets enough political power to rob the other blind. Fortunately, we can count on our wise and fearless political leaders to speak the harsh truth to us and save us from ourselves.
I don't know who Tyrone or Wellington are, but I know Al, my car mechanic, a very smart, tall, heavyset black man with 7 teenagers at home, who built his business up from nothing - really, nothing other than his brains and back. He would be the first one to tell you that if the Government doesn't let the smartest and most successful of us work our magic the way WE know how, there's going to be a much smaller pie to go around very soon. The rest is just divisive gibberish.
Then you limit your scope. Your homework, for tonight....Antitrust. You might want to take a trip to the nearest small town in your state and talk to the FORMER small business owners about a certain super-chain who undercut them because they could offer cheaper prices. Why could they offer cheaper prices? Because they are a mega-chain who can AFFORD to cut prices based on VOLUME of sales. If mom and pop, who have served the town for a least a generation, cut prices that low, they would die. Needless to say, the rest is history.
No, we manage them better and make sure they are temporary until people can get back on their feet, and that these programs reward good, honest, hard-working Americans who WANT to make it on their own. Minimum requirement, each recipient, and, primarily, their congressperson, have to say a simple "thank you" to those who make it possible. That's not too much to ask, now, is it?