In some ways I'm an idealist, in other ways a realist. I do recognize that most of the wealthy in this country probably are not going to give money to social programs out of their good will. I think the issue is that while we'd all agree that the rich should be giving money to social programs because it's the "right thing to do", I don't think it's right to take it from them. Mercy should be a free gift, and if it's not then the way to address the problem is by working on people's hearts, not threatening them and forcing them to give.

My picture of the situation is like this. You have a bunch of people living together in an apartment building. They each own their own apartments, but there are some things that are easier to manage on a building level so they get together and hire someone to manage those for them. So now they contribute toward a "building" fund that pays for these services. Because some have bigger apartments than others, some pay more to the building fund. This is all a good thing and makes good economic sense.

Now imagine that one of the tenants comes down with cancer and needs an expensive operation in order to survive. Sensing the need, the building manager alerts all of the people to the problem and suggests they donate to help the cancer patient out. This is all good, even when he goes the extra step to figure out how much each person would have to give in order for the total cost to be met. Oh, and by the way, he's taking up a lot of time figuring this stuff out, so he needs to pad the numbers a bit to cover his own costs and investment. However, one of the tenants decides not to contribute. Maybe he's cold hearted, maybe he's hard up for cash, maybe he doesn't like that the manger is taking some of the money for himself, or maybe it's one of countless other reason, but he doesn't want to give his money to help this lady. So the building manager tells this non-giver that if he doesn't give he's going to kick him out of the apartment complex.

This last part is where I have a problem. It is a good thing for the building manager to alert everyone to needs, but it shouldn't be his job to start taking money by force for things other than managing the building. What would be appropriate would be for the manager or the other owners to meet with the non-giver and try to convince him to change his stance, but ultimatly it's his choice.

Mercy should be a free gift that we all decide for ourselves, not each other. If our society is so self-centered that none of us want to give to the needy, which I think is largely the case (the realist part of me), then we have a problem. However, taking the money by force is not a good answer, IMO. The idealist in me says that we should work to influence people's hearts and minds so that mercy is important to them, not hold guns to their heads and say "you WILL give". That is only addressing a symptom (that the poor need money), not the problem (that we are an unmerciful people as a whole). What we do is keep addressing symptoms, some of which we can't even agree are symptoms. Some say that xyz is a problem, others don't even see the issue. How much better would it be if we could all decide for ourselves what the ills of society are and address them our of true mercy?

OK, truth be told we do need organizations in the middle who do the job of determining where the money should go and what to do with it. Simply handing it out on street corners is not an effective answer. However, it is still up to us which of these non-profit organizations we trust (for me it is largely my church, though I also give to some other organizations) and CHOOSE to give our money to.

So yes, I'm an idealist in a lot of respects. I think people should take personal responsibility for mercy, which doesn't happen when the government extracts money from people by force. It is a much more difficult task to influence people's hearts and minds to give of themselves, but it is also a task that will make them (and us) better human beings.

Lastly, Bitt has an excellent point about government's responsibility toward doing what's best for the nation. In this respect what the government is doing is not "mercy"; it is smart spending. I can actually go along with this and see that some social programs are designed with the purpose of helping the country, not helping individuals. So perhaps I can say this: I think the governments responsibility should be limited to helping the country; helping individuals should be the responsibility of other individuals.

An example of this is the public school system. While I'm all for privatization in order to boost both the input and output into our educational programs (better education for students and better pay for teachers), I think we'd be remiss in not providing a solid, well funded scholarship program for those who couldn't afford schooling. It would make sense for the government to be involved here because (as Bitt pointed out) the education of our young affects us all, and a more educated country is a stronger one.

So I'm not totally against the government being involved in social programs, I just think the mission needs to be refined a bit. Of course, this is all really academic because there's not a politician in the world who's going to get up and say "I think that program xyz no longer should be government funded and instead should be on the people's shoulders if they think it is something worth giving money to."