>The ideology of republicans is for individual responsibility, indeed. But, because the constituency of the party tends to be corporate management and those more well off, the actual exercise of power tends to aggrandize that power base, and can make a mockery of the ideals.
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>I got "really" serious there <s>. I try not to get too passionate about other people's business, but that does directly affect me in my community.
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OK - let's assume we are both "right" - and look at the fallout. Let's say - for sake of argument that 1 billion dollars goes to a company to develop malls and a billion goes to the poor directly.

First the "poor" - no doubt they will spend much of it on food, clothing etc. and therefore stimulate the economy somewhat. It is no doubt that much of it will go for drugs, gambling, alcohol etc, and be diluted with administrative overhead.

The "rich" mall-makers - as all "evil" rich people do - will want to get richer. In order to do that, they must hire people, buy supplies from companies that hire people, get services from companies that hire people, etc. All of which stimiulates the economy several orders of magnitude above what the billion dollars given directly did. That's the great thing about capitalism - even greed feeds the economy and makes the pie bigger for everyone - it HAS to happen that way. (the poor in this case would be wise to go get jobs building malls)

Is this "trickle down" economics? Yes - of course - and if you don't believe that it is an absolute FACT of the way the economy works - then you don't understand economics 101.

The fact is that for every person the governemnt "helps" directly - they are "hurting" several others indirectly. For example, for the government to "create" a job - they must tax someone enough to "lose" 3,4 or more jobs that the money could have supported in the private sector.

Now - I do not support giving money to mall-makers. And while I don't know the details of their being "given" the money - I can tell you that in my mind - democrats traditionally term things kind of funny - as in - "if we make you pay less of your own money to us then we are giving you money" It goes back to the thing that so many Republicns resent about Democratic politicians - namely that they actually believe the tax money "belongs' to them.