[AnthonyMouse]

>If you have a degree of means testing you can afford to provide for these people because they are a relatively small % of the population.

The problem is that they're not, because you're just picking some subset of the population and saying they're more needy than everyone else without actually providing any proof of that. Why aren't the victims of automobile collisions just as needy of that money so that they can buy more expensive safer vehicles? Why don't indigent cancer patients "need" the same level of care that Steve Jobs got?

You can pick some arbitrary subset of the population and say that we can afford to provide for them because they're a small percentage, but you can't pick that population in any just or rational way because everybody needs something -- everybody dies and would benefit if the government had given them more resources to fight the thing that killed them.

> Relying on charity will favor those who can best play that game, which will by definition make things harder for people with certain disabilities, particularly mental disabilities of less "popular" ones.

Charity is exactly as much a "game" as applying for government benefits is. If you feel for the plight of the mentally ill, by all means donate money to the charities that help those people, and join together with everyone who thinks the government should be helping them out of proportion to the rest of the population to do likewise.

[jiggy2011]

I mean people who can't do the basics such as feed or clothe themselves without assistance, not people who want a better car.

[AnthonyMouse]

You're making an emotional argument. Let me try. Why are you condemning the single mother whose job has no access to mass transit and who can't afford to live within walking distance, who therefore has to drive a death trap and endanger her life and the lives of her children?

The problem is that we have limited resources. We can't save everyone. And making emotional arguments gets in the way of doing the most good. Why is it better to spend money on nurses to change the bed pans of the mentally ill than to spend it giving opportunities to those who want to go to medical school, who may one day ultimately cure them?