Quote Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh View Post
Well, you're preaching to the choir about bailouts for the financial institutions. The best that can be said of these bailouts is that they attenuated and stretched out time-wise the damage. It's a tough argument whether a short horrific collapse or a slow dismantling is the more painful route to recovery -- lots of folks hurt either way. To the extent that fraud was committed by some Wall Streeters, there are people needing a bit of time in jail as well as asset confiscation.

Yes, in a de facto fashion, using government largesse v tax assessment will likely screen out a higher percentage of lower-income persons. They are screened out, however, not because they are lower income but because they have a vested interest in pushing for higher benefits for themselves at the expense of other taxpayers. How would you address that concern?
I agree with that first paragraph completely.

As for the second, I would address that concern by saying that it is a concern that unfairly targets the poor as it applies directly to the rich as well and even the middle class to a degree. Everyone has a vested interest in pushing for high benefits for themselves at the expense of other taxpayers. There is no difference between the poor man wanting a 100 dollars from welfare and the rich man wanting 100 dollars cut from his taxes. We all work the system this way, in some way. The rich person will still pay more to the government then they get from it, but they work the system to cut another 5-10% from their income tax, which is quite a large benefit for themselves and absolutely counter to fiscal responsibility as much as the poor man abuse scenario. Even more so since the 5-10% of the rich mans salary is a bigger hit then 5 poor men receiving that fixed welfare salary.