Xanthippa's Chamberpot

Charity is good – just like Shakespeare spoke of mercy (paraphrasing): it blesses him who receives it as well as him who provides it.

Yet, in order for this to be true, it needs to be personal: one person choses to help another, one way or another.

When governments get involved – we are taking on a whole new thing.

Governments decide who is to ‘receive funds’ and who is to ‘surrender funds’ – you cannot give someone money without first taking it from someone else. Governments have a monopoly on taking money from some individuals (taxes) and they are permitted to use force to extract these funds.

Nay, they have a monopoly on violence to extract taxes.

These are collected from all citizens, willing or not. (We shall focus on the ‘not’ ones in just a bit.)

Then, a portion of these tax-collected funds are given out to people who do not work (cannot or are not willing to – sad, but irrelevant to the point of my argument).

So, some people work without compensation (taxes taken away) for a period of time (part of the year) only to support the lifestyle of other people who do not work.

In other words: people who are on welfare are ‘slave owners’ who do not need to work yet have their living needs provided for by other people who do work, but who would not support them if it were not for the threat of force (in this case, by the tax collecting governments).

If working/doing things for the benefit of others under the threat of force is not THE definition of ‘slavery’, then I do not know what is: and I would like your input – please correct me if I am wrong!