I would like to see your source on that.  Since all the studies I have seen contradict that statement.

No, it does not.  I will concede that perhaps a cup half full to one is half empty to another, but you made a very blanket statement that is not born out in any numbers supplied so far.

Part of the problem in giving is in living.  i.e., taxes come before anything.  Get the government out of the charity (or welfare - your choice of words), and you not only put more money in the pockets of people that can be used for charity (and I am not going to argue a 1-1 relationship), but you cut out a huge and wasteful bureaucracy that siphons off a large percent of that money in administrative overhead.

Again, you said:

Which regardless of the numbers so far presented, is nor represented by the data.  Simply put, it appears that humans are very charitable - but for whose definition of it?  A welfare state's?  Or in the amount that you or I give?

So you have actually opened a 2 part question with one blanket statement.  One is how much (which was answered) and how does that relate to the needs that are out there?  Seems to me that between a very ineffecient government and what we are giving to existing charities, it is keeping the needs of those in need satisfied.  So should we give more so they not only have their needs filled - but their mercedes Benz as well?

People should be nice too.  But in reality, they don't.  I don't feel any moral responsibility to give money to stupid people who couldn't be bothered to save up for retirement.  Americans DO give enough to charity to ensure that no Americans starve. You may want to look up some of the stats on private charitable giving in this country.

There is no middle ground on this particular issue - you are either forcibly taking from people to give to another or you're not. I think it's wrong to loot from people.

Also, promoting the general welfare does not mean income re-distribution.  You might want to read the Federalist Papers to learn what the founding fathers meant.

This article isn't some vague question. It is specific - should we pay for the retirement for other people. My answer is: No.  I am okay with stupid people who didn't retire starving to death (even though that wouldn't happen).

Believe it or not, elderly Americans were not starving enmasse on the streets prior to the 20th century.  They had these things called families who took care of them. This is the way most of society has lived throughout human history.

Yes, there are 35 million idiots (at least) in the United States.  As someone who has years of experience in hiring people (and the people I hire are generally far above average) I have seen plenty of the kind of people who end up relying on people like me to feed and shelter them when they retire.

It doesn't take a genius to say $20 a week. It just requires some basic personal discipline.

This is too stupid to respond to.  You should get out more, talk to a social worker or two. 

Now, with regarsd to Q of the Day:

For starters, if you're over 35 making $8 per hour you have either chosen that job because you want to live that way, have health problems or you're a loser who has managed to go over 15 years without developing any skills. There may be some people who don't fit into one of those categories but for the most part, those are the types that are making $8 an hour at 35 or older.

The base salary of an office worker (someone who answers phones, photo copies, does email, etc.) is well over $10 per hour and that's usually someone right out of high school or college. 

So my first question to you is, what the hell are you doing with your life?

Secondly, $8 an hour is around $1,400 a month. 

Let's talk about your costs:

First thing you do is get an apartment with a roommate which should cost you less than $400 per month with utilities. So now you have around $1,000 per month.

If you're spending $300 per month on food, you're a dumbass. My family of 5 spends around $600 per month on food and we don't skimp.  You should be able to eat decently on around $150 per month ($200 tops).

Why are you spending $25 on clothing each month?  You spend nearly $300 a year on clothing? That's more than I spend.

My Jaguar gets 15 miles per gallon. I fill up twice per month at around $40 per fill up for a total of $80 per month.   You can't manage manage to get a Toyota that gets 30 miles per gallon? Even an old clunker can do tha tif it's small.  So where in the hell do you need $175 per month on gas? You driving over 50 miles per day to your $8 an hour job???

The federal taxes you get back so you can't count that.  What is personal allowance? 

But just casually looking at your own budget, you are wasting easily $200 from where I'm sitting.

But let's get to the meat: Do you really believe it's my responsibility to take care of you in your old age?

It's easy for guys like you to cry about "bias against the poor" or sound compassionate because you don't actually have to do anything to back up your principles.  It's guys like me who end up having to deliver. 

That's one of the things that makes me so resentful of welfare programs. Guys like you will spit out how greedy or uncaring I am even as you cash checks paid for by guys like me.

Pyramid schemes like Social Security and Medicare hide the fact that people are getting money paid for by other people that they didn't earn.  With retirement age now 65 but people living until 75 or 80 or older, that's 15 years of money that typically goes way beyond what they ever put in.

Other than those that CHOOSE to live that way, I defy you to find any living below poverty.  Poverty being defined as not being able to adequately feed oneself (or family in the case of a head of household), or provide shelter.

Note, I did not say Poor, but poverty.  Note also I am not using the Government's definition (since it is indexed and hence will always be with us regardles of the standard of living defined).

Now, you might want to check out a list on Island Dogs latest article that shows 80 welfare or safety net programs available.  You might also want to show where those programs cannot be used by the people you have tried to define.  Then you may want to show where they have been denied assistance by any charity organization they have applied for.

Simply put, you are going to be hard pressed to gather those statistics, much less prove such a nebulous assertion as you have made.  For other than those that chose to be homeless, there really is no one in this country that lives in poverty.  Poor?  Sure.  But when 90% of the "poor" in this country have at least one TV (hardly a necessity), 75% have a car (definitely not a necessity), and over 70% suffer from obesity (hardly the symptom of a lack of food - whether it is nutritious or not is another matter altogether), you are not going to convince anyone outside the DNC or the left that there is non-voluntary poverty in America.

(regarding people using welfare money to buy my products ThinkAloud responded)

No, it's not good for me.

If I can turn every $1 of capital into $5 then when the government takes that $1 much of it is lost to beauracracy. Hence, only around 25 cents gets to the recipient.

So why should I get excited if that 25 cents of the $1 I paid makes its way back to me in the form of a software purchase? I would rather have kept the dollar in the first place. 

Your line of thinking would be like me going to Best Buy and buying my own game thinking I got a good deal because the money comes back to me.  But not all of it does. That $40 game only results me me getting $20 of it because of all the beauracy (middle men) involved.

And this is why you are poor. You really have no understanding of economics.  Looting money from me and then giving me back a pittance is not a good deal.

The best thing our federal government can do for the vast majority of people is to leave us the hell alone.

Other rich countries have even more programs. And we don't want to be like them.

I would rather be a society that values self-reliance than a society that has endless amounts of compassion.

As LW pointed out, we give hundreds of billions of dollars to charity each year. But at the end of the day, as long as people feel entitled to have a certain standard of living, whether they've earned it or not, we will always have demands for people to leech off of others.

First off, bullshit. Only a tiny % of Americans, mostly in urban areas, live in anything that could be considered true poverty. You need to quit thinking with your gut and research some of this stuff before spouting off things that are patently untrue.

Secondly, the difference between charities and the government is that governments force me, at the point of the gun, to contribute to them, charities do not.  I gave more to charity last year than you made. Much more.  But I chose to do that and I picked charities I felt were the most effective.

The government, however, took vastly more than that from me.  Money that I would have used to hire more people to keep growing faster.  The federal government alone prevented me from hiring 10 more people last year.  TEN people.  Do you think the government created 10 jobs with that same money? Hell no.