I find it funny how the Left decries the right to smoke in public and the right to bear arms, two moral rights, but then they talk all day long of material “rights.” A government big enough to give you everything is also big enough to take it away. Besides, shouldn’t we be more weary of government power? Why do the left-wingers treat government as though it’s their rich father or mother?

My statistics were good. Figures were pulled from federal and non-profit sources dedicated to homelessness:

http://www.hud.gov/news/release.cfm?content=pr08-113.cfm

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/facts/Whois.pdf

Homelessness is a problem, but truly a fringe issue. There is no widespread poverty in the U.S. no matter how you splice the stats.

Welfare decreases incentives to produce…that is not a question. It’s such a fundamental axiom I find it difficult to delve any further into rationale for why it is the case. People work for a reason-to obtain resources to survive-if those resources are provided from means other than employment or production there is less reason to work.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6698

This gets back to defining and evaluating measures of performance for social programs. The U.S. thus far has spent over $10 trillion on welfare programs, with no measurable impact on poverty. No matter what supporting examples we contrive to support welfare, these figures and their dismal historical performance speak definitively.

On top of decades of failure I find it imperative to question the philosophical implications of forcefully taking property from people to fund social experimentation. This is even more true when we speak of social experiments that lack accountability, objectives, and performance requirements.

As I said last time, money is nothing more than a measure of value. There are certainly values that reside outside the marketplace, but even for many of these money helps. Reality dictates we must produce at least enough to survive. In a market economy we can trade with others to decrease total input requirements to obtain minimal subsistence, but there is no escaping the fact that we must produce to survive. Money is nothing more than a measure of that production.

Sorry to belabor the point, but if you want to spend time doing anything you value you must have sufficient resources to defer spending time producing. Having money means you can forgo work and spend your time/life doing whatever you’d like. Even your friend who lives on less than $25K/yr must devote a portion of her life to producing enough to satisfy her values.

There is nothing wrong with voluntary socialism. Free collaboration is awesome, but the key is that it must be free. Introducing government to the equation changes that. By definition, political implementations of Socialism require the use of force to force people to live within guidelines established by others.

I definitely agree with you on the trappings of moral regulations and other social restrictions. I think you know by now I am equally opposed to authorities telling me how to live my life as I am of them taking my property.

40% of those who are homeless are families with children. This is the fastest growing segment.

That sounds like a bit more than 0.04% to me. Perhaps you are talking about permanent homelessness. That number is quite a bit lower… as it is in Canada and the EU. Now, it should be noted that the methodology for gathering homelessness stats is at its most strict in the US (many who would be considered homeless in the EU, Australia, and Canada are not considered homeless in the US… this includes people living in hotels that are rented by the week or paid use shelters, everyone agrees that people in free shelters are homeless). I am in the process of reading the 300+ pages of the EU’s latest report on homelessness so I can’t give you the total numbers yet (it’s a bit of a dense read). It should also be noted that EU stats include not just western social democracies, but a number of failed states, the unified Germany where numbers are distorted by the worker pool from former East Germany, etc.

As to money, you said that doing what you want is freedom. If you can do whatever you want with your money, but are restricted to a specific church of worship, have strong legal restrictions on recreational activities, have to follow strict rules for who you can have a relationship with, are you free? If you have no money, but you are free to do absolutely anything you want, then are you free? Currency is a measure of freedom only in the context of the society we live in and even then, it is not the only one that matters. Money is a measure of power, not of freedom. By and large it is a measure of power over others, not control over your own life. I am going to give you another example (and yes, I know it is anecdotal): This woman has never earned more than 25,000 a year after taxes (and that was an extraordinarily good year for her), she travels around the world on her own dime, works the hours she feels like working (sometimes the months she feels like working), eats at nice restaurants when she wants to and generally live a life that many would envy… until they realize she does this without the trappings of wealth we take for granted. She lives in a commune with several friends, so her accommodations cost her less than public housing often does here (yes, you still pay rent in the pubs… just a lot less of it), she doesn’t have cable tv, she shares Internet with the whole group, she shares some food costs with the group (and pays some for herself). Is she free? She chooses socialism after all, everyone working for the good of all. She thinks she is, and I tend to believe her.

At a minimum, we should question costs and benefits of welfare systems, setting measurable objectives and actively tracking data. Combined local, state, and federal welfare costs amount to over $1 trillion in the U.S. We cannot circumvent the reality of living in a world of finite resources, so welfare at all costs is unacceptable.

When it comes to costs we need to look beyond the annual budgetary impacts of these programs, and towards the total long-term economic and social costs. We create dependent populations with decreased incentives to produce on their own. Crime tends to increase with dependency, not poverty. We create serf-like castes of people, treating them like animals rather than humans. Every bit of time spent outside of the labor market decreases the value of human capital and individual long-term prospects to succeed on their own.

I have personally heard many stories of individuals tracking income and welfare program income limits, intentionally remaining below income thresholds to sustain welfare benefits. This is not a healthy situation and far more common an issue than realized.

Money is merely a store of value to exchange. Having money does equal freedom. You can do whatever you want with your life with money. You can buy what you want, go where you want, and do what you want. That is the ultimate freedom. Most people spend their lives doing things they otherwise would not do if they had more money. Demands on other peoples’ money will always be accompanied by warped philosophical arguments for why people should happily relinquish their possessions. Human relations need not be accompanied by force. It is possible to live freely amongst each other. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are far better “social contracts” than Rousseau’s version.