>In answer to your question, taxpayers are paying for "handouts," of course. As we always have. Do you dispute the point I actually made, that redistribution is currently from the middle class to the upper class? The numbers are indisputable.

One fallacy in the whole redistribution story is that it's called REdistribution. As if it was once distributed alright, fair and square (wanted to write squair just for the rhyme :), and then the bad guys came and did it again, for their own selfish reasons.

IMO, it never happened. The original distribution, which is artificially "fixed" by whatever system you put in place, was never fair and square. It was, maybe, in some cases/times/places freely agreed upon between parties involved, but as a rule it was arrived at by force, political maneuvering, backroom deals, blackmail, manipulating the market, and let's not forget plain robbery (and then buying legislature to make it legally owned), spoils of wars, colonial robbery etc etc. The original distribution was surely neither too original nor fair.

Redistribution happens whenever distribution leaves sufficient number of people seriously deurinated.