[yummyfajitas]

Most of the transfers are to old people, a group which is disproportionately unlikely to be poor or to engage in a violent uprising.

Of course, if the poor are truly as evil and dangerous as you say, wouldn't it be better just to wall them off from the rest of us? For the cost of welfare, we could triple the money we spend on the police.

[philwelch]

Most of the transfers are to old people, a group which is disproportionately unlikely to be poor or to engage in a violent uprising.

You're right, and there other self-interested motivations for rich people to support social welfare, including hedging against future misfortune, support of friends and loved ones who may not be as well off and who would be more expensive to support on an individual basis, and the fact that end-of-life health care is often expensive enough to matter even to the significantly wealthy.

Of course, if the poor are truly as evil and dangerous as you say, wouldn't it be better just to wall them off from the rest of us?

Where did I say the poor are evil? I'm accounting for self-interest, not making a moral argument.

Oppressing the poor in order to keep them from rising up against the ruling class has never worked. Taking care of the poor in order to prevent them from even wanting to rise up against the ruling class consistently works.

This isn't even a new idea. I ripped it off from Bismarck, who, "working closely with big industry and aiming to head off the Socialists, implemented the world's first welfare state in the 1880s." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Bismarck.27s_...

As notahacker points out, a lot of this stuff is also a side effect of having a democracy. Having a democracy is perhaps an even better hedge against violent uprisings.

[yummyfajitas]

You're right, and there other self-interested motivations for rich people to support social welfare,...

If that were true, there would be no need for force. We could make SS/medicare an opt-in scheme.

Where did I say the poor are evil?

If the poor will use violence unless they receive tribute, they are evil.

Oppressing the poor in order to keep them from rising up against the ruling class has never worked.

I'm only advocating separation. If the poor truly are dangerously violent, lets wall them off from the rest of us. A fence is pretty easy to police.

Oppression is only necessary if you need the labor output of the poor, which we manage to survive just fine without (in the US, the vast majority of the poor don't work at all).

[philwelch]

If that were true, there would be no need for force. We could make SS/medicare an opt-in scheme.

No, you couldn't. For game-theoretic reasons, it has to be mandatory to work.

If the poor will use violence unless they receive tribute, they are evil.

Again, I'm not making a moral argument at all. It's your own moral judgment to tar hungry people as "evil" for rising up against a wealthy ruling class--and expressing sentiments like that, quite frankly, reveals far more about you than about me.

If the poor truly are dangerously violent, lets wall them off from the rest of us. A fence is pretty easy to police. Oppression is only necessary if you need the labor output of the poor, which we manage to survive just fine without (in the US, the vast majority of the poor don't work at all).

The poor aren't "dangerously violent" unless they starve or otherwise slip into absolute destitution, at which point they will try and take what they can get from the rich. The entire history of violent revolution bears this out.

And I think you're misunderstanding this. I'm talking about the distinction between the richest 5% of society and the other 95%. Because that's roughly how the original problem--progressive taxation--is meant to break down anyway. And if you add up things like Medicare, Social Security benefits, and unemployment insurance--frankly, there's a lot of legitimate need for those things, even among working and middle class populations.