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I.e. you can either tax the rich in order to make it possible for the poor to earn a decent living (e.g. subsidized education), or to mollify their discontent (guaranteed minimum income), or you can tax the rich to pay for huge numbers of riot cops and prisons and elite police in wealthy communities.
Meanwhile, contrary to right-wing poutrage, most of the social safety nets are often cut. Welfare was replaced with TANF, which is short-term, and so difficult to get that most poor people think it's better to keep looking for minimum-wage jobs. AFDC eligibility is typically tied to work, and it doesn't pay much.
It was in concert with BJ that a lot of that cutting started. Of course he had to be forced, he vetoed it twice, now takes credit for...
However, I think your equation leaves out something quite important. What motivates people to strive for better?
Paying them a higher minimum wage that pretty much becomes a wash when prices necessarily rise? Paying them minimally to sit at home and watch tv, the time and idleness to often dabble in bad habits without too much consequence but none of which is very positive? Or you would rather take steadily more and more from the often far more productive and give to those who are not even trying very hard? You think any of those promotes a good work ethic, a reason to get off one's ass and strive a little harder cause it could well improve their living standards?
Those of us who choose/chose the latter method, of working the mindless minimal wage jobs until we could gain the confidence of employers, be rewarded with more responsibility and more pay, gaining more and varied experience that way along the way, becoming more valuable to your employer and other, potentially higher paying employers. Maybe supplementing that with some outside learning and experiences. That latter is how the system works, the former is how the system fails. You should not and cannot reward sloth, you cannot pay a person more than the value of their work product.
But if you would like to try that, there are enough liberals, some pretty damn rich ones [Buffet, Kennedys, Duponts quickly come to mind] and a vibrant middle class of libs that can send in extra tax dollars, I am pretty sure the Treasury would accept and appreciate your altruism with your own money.
That's one way to look at it. You can also see redistribution (albeit somewhat cynically) as a purely practical matter. Namely: Excessive levels of income inequality generates a great deal of unrest, both due to public discontent with their relative economic status, with the increasing evidence that the society is not a meritocracy or that the wealthy cannot justify their extreme economic status, with the incredible political influence accorded to the wealthy.
I.e. you can either tax the rich in order to make it possible for the poor to earn a decent living (e.g. subsidized education), or to mollify their discontent (guaranteed minimum income), or you can tax the rich to pay for huge numbers of riot cops and prisons and elite police in wealthy communities.
Income equality is a dog whistle calling all socialists to sing the same tune. We have relative poverty in the US. What someone else has, unless it is criminally ill gotten, should be basically theirs to keep. Its theft otherwise. There should be no starving in the US, minimal shelters to assist people through especially hard times and opportunities to volunteer time to help out the community, at minimum, be a requirement for accepting government aid. Most of us are understanding that all go through some problems in life and some actually do need a safety net.
Beyond that, earn yourself. Strive.
Of the three choices you give, yes, I would rather hire huge numbers of cops to earn their pay if people want to steal from others using the threat of mob mentality extortion instead of by earning it.