no, i'm just pointing out that you have repeatedly shown enough distrust of government that i am calling you on your endless bullshit.

no disagreement here in regards to money spent. the question is, how can we turn away people who need a hand up? it's obvious that charities are not able to handle the load, if you had only read through to the middle of the article you posted, much less the end of it. government assistance worked out pretty well for people like mitt romney, paul ryan, JK Rowling, and oprah among others. you're basically saying that we should have left these people to starve on the streets rather than spend one dime of government assistance to help them not be destitute. in both regards -- how much we spend, and how many are improving -- we are failing miserably, and it has more to do with the super rich getting richer than any other single policy we've enacted over the last 50 years.

actually you probably wouldn't but it's ok because i know you're trying to be serious. the vast majority of people who collect government assistance would rather be making a decent living and not have to rely on the government to survive, but for whatever reason they can't. again, it's our duty as a civilized society to make sure they don't die simply because we have a callous attitude about their lack of being born wealthy.

actually, it has worked very well, but every year we get told how people who can afford to buy their own private Hawaiian islands somehow need even more money or else they might not be able to fire even more people next year. we can't keep giving more tax handouts to the people who don't need it, it's not a sustainable economic practice. consider that when poverty was at its highest in the 1960s, CEO compensation was roughly 4-10 times higher than the average worker's salary. now it is 400x higher, companies are sitting on a pile of money they don't know what to do with, and rather than hire people to do work, they just stockpile their cash and expect the rest of us to be grateful to have what meager scraps they leave for us.

i honestly am not overly concerned with your reasoning for adopting specifically a chinese baby when there are so many unwanted children all over the world. i applaud you for deciding to adopt, but by and large it's your decision and i'm not sure it really has any bearing on how people are suffering here, in the US. i've personally given a little over 4% of my income last year to charities, but at the same time i can at least acknowledge that we should be finding ways to prevent people from suffering, and that the government is in the best position to help the most people for the least cost. you can rail all you want about your tax burden and what you perceive is a lack of value, but if we take your view of the world, we will be pushing 75% into poverty and i'm sure you'll still come here to gloat about that when it happens too.