Analyzing yet one more conservative/libertarian poster...

I like a lot of things about Penn Jillette - he's a great entertainer and he seems to be relatively intelligent. On the other hand, there's so much wrong with this argument that it's hard to know where to begin.

But first off, it's just flat out selfishness. Do you really think that if his share of the taxes that go to help the indigent were returned to him that suddenly his charitable giving would rise to new levels? Yeah - me neither. He would keep most of it.

From Bloomberg, the financial news magazine...

On the political right, it’s a refrain that this is a problem for private charities to deal with, because the government is spending too much on safety net programs. Yet charitable donations fell during the recession, as rich people became less generous. What’s more, financing to charities that are actually trying to help the poor are tiny  compared to undersized official safety net programs. All of which demonstrates why we can’t leave social protection to charitable donations.---http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-10-13/why-private-donations-arent-helping-americas-poor

So, we can see that private giving will not meet the needs of America's most helpless. We can only assume, and I think it is fair to do that, that Penn Jillette and his cohorts just don't give a shit about anyone but themselves. They don't care if the infirm, the elderly, children, and others temporarily down on their luck wind up homeless and hungry. They don't care if they die. He just wants to keep all of his money for himself, and maybe occasionally, he will throw a bone to a hungry dog.

Now let's deal with the nonsense - things like "using guns" to take his money away. Really, Penn? How fucking stupid is that? You pay taxes in America by choice, not at the point of a gun. If you don't like paying the taxes, then move to some country where anarchy exists - Somalia is the most frequently named nation that parallels libertarianism.  We won't even miss you. Seriously. You've got way more money than you need to live on and you can afford the ticket out of here.

I'll even wave good-bye.