Empirically speaking, government is utterly horrible about taking care of the elderly and disabled. The mentally disabled historically were far better treated by their communities before the government instituted sanitoria.
And government has been similarly horrible at taking care of the poor. a large part of social equalization in the 1900-1950 era was the ascendancy of private community associations, mutual benefit societies, and so forth. The remnants of these are the Kiwanis, Lions, Rotary club, etc... But these have been squeezed out by government sponsored programs, and we have seen economic inequity rise. Part of this is probably also because the poor have been squeezed by money printing - but that's another issue altogether.
Especially the way that the government engages in charity. By spending money that is borrowed to bail out the poor (the anti-austerity argument) - the government transfers funds to the poor (which, let's assume is fine) by borrowing from the rich and politically connected. But it's a loan, so the rich are getting paid back, with interest. The net resource flow is to the rich, even though you have paid the poor.
Block Island, RI, is a good example of a community thant functions to help each other without government aid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUxu02GPAqg
And government has been similarly horrible at taking care of the poor. a large part of social equalization in the 1900-1950 era was the ascendancy of private community associations, mutual benefit societies, and so forth. The remnants of these are the Kiwanis, Lions, Rotary club, etc... But these have been squeezed out by government sponsored programs, and we have seen economic inequity rise. Part of this is probably also because the poor have been squeezed by money printing - but that's another issue altogether.
Especially the way that the government engages in charity. By spending money that is borrowed to bail out the poor (the anti-austerity argument) - the government transfers funds to the poor (which, let's assume is fine) by borrowing from the rich and politically connected. But it's a loan, so the rich are getting paid back, with interest. The net resource flow is to the rich, even though you have paid the poor.