The vast majority of the population wants to redistribute. People may want changes to welfare, but very few support getting rid of it. I've never heard of significant opposition to the Earned Income Tax Credit. I could keep going, but I think you get the point.
Welfare is appalling to me. I would love to see it reduced or eliminated. However I am not pissed about the Earned Income Tax Credit. At least these people are working for their money, paying the largest percent of their income to payroll tax, property tax & sales tax & doing great service to this country unlike the Wallstreet bankers who are stealing it tax free to boot. Even Adam Smith (the father of modern economics and capitalism) said that the rich should pay more percent of their wealth in taxes than the poor.
Adam Smith - "It must always be remembered, however, that it is the luxurious and not the necessary expense of the inferior ranks of people that ought ever to be taxed. The final payment of any tax upon their necessary expense would fall altogether upon the superior ranks of people; upon the smaller portion of the annual produce, and not upon the greater."
Adam Smith - "The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state."
Adam Smith - "The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."
