"The Conservative Fantasy"

A few days ago Huffington Post wrote an article criticizing the "Conservative Fantasy". It claimed that a caring society could not take of the poor nor charities (who specialize in taking care of the poor). It also claims that only government can effectively do so. In reality, this is quite wrong. Horribly wrong. And they know it. That is why they call the conservative ideas "fantasies". Because those ideas are fantastic. This fantasy of Sen. Lee's is a society that actually cares about the poor to the point of actually helping them as opposed to bitterly allowing the government to take the money by tax and griping about it later. This is a FANTASTIC idea. A caring society! But no, Huffington Post dictates that you need a government.

The Huffies oppose Sen. Lee's dislike of social programs. Credit can go to social programs for transferring money to the poor and helping them out of poverty. Even though this decentivizes productive work on both sides, wasted money through a system unpolished by competition, and limits the natural charity systems it can still be considered positive since it keeps the poor out of poverty. It isn't like that money would have went to legitimate and efficient charities or have been put into the economy causing products cheaper or anything.

Then, in an attempt to attach its ramblings to reality, the Huffies use a few statistics. They point out the huge drop in the poverty rate (10 percent over fourty years) and claim that it was because of the social programs. Meanwhile, they completely ignore the improvement in the US economy over that time period (US GDP more than tripled). Later in the piece the Huffies remark that private charity giving has always fallen short. This is absolutely true, all the charity money is being sucked up by the Government by tax and being publicly donated.

So ultimately, through reading the article, one realizes that there would truly never be enough charity without the government forcing the redistribution. A good point on the Huffies side. That is, unless, we could truly be a good, caring society.