Michael Brown still beat up little old men. Ben Franklin's quote comes to mind here. Freedom is dangerous, but I'd rather be free than safe and a prisoner. If we're saying it's okay for the government to take our money and give it to feral urban youth so they don't hurt us, how is that different than mafia bent-noses collecting 20% of a shopkeeper's income every week "to protect his place from being burned down"?
The whole urban youths thing is actually something I picked up recently trying to research the history of public schools in America. It actually was an argument made in several states the very early 1800s, also how poor kids would go to school for free and rich folks would pay the way for their kids and supplement the poor kids.
I was trying to decide is vouchers were a good or bad thing, should monies (or a certain %) stay in the district where a student lives if they open enroll, etc.
Did you know that by 1870 all states (ones at the time) had tax subsidized elementary schools?
Sure. That includes the lower income brackets that don't report tips and such. The biggest problem our society has is that 50% of the population doesn't have any skin in the game.
In theory, I would not have a big problem with some tax money (though I would prefer it to be private charities) going to "havenots" given: It's someone who is truly down on their luck. I don't mind helping the person who lost their home in a tornado and their workplace along with it, on a temporary basis until they get back on their feet. However, it has to be someone who is trying, not someone who would rather collect welfare than work at McDonald's or pick up a shovel (or is saying, "give me money or I'll mug people"). It also has to be in a society where we are only giving 10% of the population the helping hand. When you're doling out the dole to half the population, there is a big problem that more taxes are never going to fix. If anything, they will only grow the problem.
Would be nice if it was just a temporary handout, but realistically is there enough jobs at or above the poverty line where many of these people work to get them off entitlements? Some of these poor areas are just poor with not much hope because of past actions of the residents being screwed over several decades ago. Something like in the 1920s incomes between blacks and whites in urban areas were fairly equal, then bad things started to happen financially to the black communities by outsiders. Not violence, but predatory lending and or laws created that prevented blacks taking out mortages, etc. Called Redlining.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedliningNot saying it is an excuse, but it is going to take a whole lot of intervention to break the entitlement cycle, isn't going to happen overnight. You take away bennies, without a income opportunity to replace it, going to be a lot of pissed off people and a lot of violence.
Trump was touching on some of this in his campaign how we haven't fixed the urban problems.
Trust me I'm racking my brain on this, I would to see a lot more participation in the workforce and lot less entitlements, but how do you do it and not cause a lot of social unrest that ends up more costly then keeping the entitlements flowing.
