It isnt as simple as you are trying to make it.
when you are talking about wealth redistribution, that is, in fact, what you are talking about. some individuals claiming property rights over other individuals labor. it is only those problems of the
commons that represent any other kind of government expenditure.
Really? You can keep your lifestyle going without ANY help from anyone?
1. that's not what you said, what you claimed was that most people got back more from society than they put in; were this the case, society would rapidly collapse.
2. i can maintain my lifestyle without
forcing anyone via state coercion to give up their wealth to me. i have qualified for food stamps, wic, and a host of other welfare-esque policies, and have taken none of them; and been just fine.
Relying on people to be altruistic at this stage of our development is not feasible.
incorrect. as our development increases, the need for others to provide sustenance decreases, and the capability of the issues to be handled by either private charity or local governance increases. furthermore, it is empirically demonstratable that private giving shoots downward as the state becomes involved in welfare spending and wealth redistribution.
if i may cite a historical
example. Grover Cleveland vetoed the Texas Seed Act, arguing that A) it wasn't Constitutionally allowed for the Federal Government to issue out aid and B) it would depress total aid to those people, as it would lower private giving. instead he vetoed the bill and called for private giving to replace the 10,000; he turned out to be correct and private charity met his call by giving more than the Congress had allotted in the first place.
The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.
this is something that we used to realize in our nation. as President Franklin Pierce put it:
If Congress is to make provision for [paupers], the fountains of charity will be dried up at home, and the several States, instead of bestowing their own means on the social wants of their people, may themselves, through the strong temptations, which appear to States as individuals, become humble supplicants for the bounty of the Federal Government, reversing their true relation to this Union.
which pretty much sums up where we find ourselves moving today.
We cant put up a system and then just hope people will contribute enough for it to work.
we don't need to 'put up' a system at all.
If you want the system to work at all, the initial stages must be compulsory.
then it is no longer morally justifiable. yes robbing peter to give to paul will always be popular with paul, but let's not pretend it falls under the rubric of moral right.
Your study is focused on claims made during electoral campaigns, not on the idea in general.
did you read the study, or just the section i cited? in fact that study did a pretty sweeping assessment of the literature about preventative care, and it matches several others that i have seen which come to the same result: mass preventative medicine does
not necessarily represent an efficient use of resources. our dependence on it
now is a major part of driving our healthcare costs up, as it needlessly increases demand.
If someone needs to come in once every six months for a $40 checkup and receive $100 worth of care in that year, that's infinitely cheaper than not going to the doctor for five years then being hospitalized for tens of thousands of dollars to treat a chronic condition that went undiagnosed. On top of that, the time and resources of the hospital that were not spent on that person's hospitalization are put elsewhere.
you are mistaking cost-efficiency for a single individual with cost-efficiency for the entire system. if 15,000 people get a test that costs $350 every year, and out of that 15,000, 100 individuals are saved an average of $10,000 because it turns out they had the disease and caught it early; that still leaves you $4,250,000 in the hole
system wide.
and just to continue to drive the point home:
Preventive care not always cost effective, experts say
Most preventive care does not result in cost savings
CBO: for most preventive services, expanded utilization leads to higher, not lower, medical spending overall.
and so on and so forth.