Well those that have unmet needs, are hardly likely to be the well off! And able to engage in tax minimisation, that may well see their personal liability reduced to just 15 cents in the dollar, then expect to be first in the queue for taxpayer funding amenity!

While the disadvantaged are forced by the eternal price wage spiral to jump over successive braket creeps!

I remember a season picking apples and the foul mouthed abusive farmer (sunday morning Christian) always on my case demanding production outcomes none of the other apple munching pickers were required to match.

It would have been different if we had our own individual bins and were paid by the bin and not the day!

When I found alternative employment he was all contrite and wanted me, his best picker to stay on!

This all too common story, highlights the fact that the better off, usually get there thanks to serendipity, [picking the eyes out of charity bins,] or flogging other folks!

And have no inherent sense of financial justice or shame?
Rhrosty.

Brian, I think the flaws in your argument are twofold.

Firstly your belief that wealth is a zero-sum game - that the enrichment of one is to that extent the impoverishment of another - is flatly incorrect. A moment's reflection will show that, if this assumption were true, mankind could never have progressed beyond the standard of living of our distant ancestors, since one person's gain would have been another person's loss.

You have made no attempt to justify your assumption, which you don't even articulate or identify. You don't even seem to be aware that you are making it. This failure completely invalidates your entire argument.

For your information, if the incomes and wealth of the people of the world were equal, the result would be the death by starvation of thousands of millions of people in short order.

You have only displayed complete ignorance of the economics of what you are talking about, which in an essay on political economy, is inexcusable.

Secondly, by the same token, you make no attempt to identify, explain or justify your assumptions in favour of the State as some kind of wealth-creating or wealth-optimising device.

I challenge you to do so, and if you do, I undertake to show why your belief is every bit as irrational and religious, as the belief of religious people in religion.

All you have done is transfer irrational religious credulity from an open-ended faith in the authority of the church to that of the State.

That's a complete fail, twice over.

In a word, you're talking nonsense. Go ahead: accept my challenge.