Many religious-left bloggers have been criticizing religious-conservative voters, saying that if their faith truly drove their religious views, they must support government programs like national health care, higher minimum wage laws, and higher taxes on the rich. I disagree.
Government programs, implemented for the intention of compassion, are rarely compassionate in practice. President George H.W. Bush was right when he compared a system of national health care to a combination of the Dept of Motor Vehicles with a hospital. A recent case in England drives the point home, where a man with a terminal illness is being denied a feeding tube because his care is deemed to be too expensive for the state to keep him alive. Is this the patient's choice? No. Compassionate? Of course not. It's all about saving money for the state.
Likewise, higher minimum wage laws are not effective in lifting the poor out of poverty. They create a barrier to entry for those entering the labor market (such as high school and college-age youty, and those seeking a career change), and also increase unemployment for those in jobs which just cannot justify the higher wage. For those who get raises without any increase in productivity, the higher wages result in higher prices, so the new wages ultimately become meaningless so a few years later the same complaints about not getting a living wage are still heard. No one, including me, likes to see people not be able to make ends meet, but a much better approach is to improve peoples' mobility; better job training, helping a person out in seeking a new job, and decreasing the dependency people have on company benefits. There are those who will still sit in a dead-end job, expecting it to meet all their needs, but there also comes a point where personal initiative has to intervene as well, and a recognition that a person's choices and attitude will have an effect on their standard of living. Given all that, I'm not in favor of a minimum wage of $0. There should be a floor. I'm just arguing that that floor should not be risen arbitrarily, year after year after year, with the motivation of making all people equally well-off. That just isn't going to happen, and any attempt to make it so via wage regulation is only going to result in higher unemployment and inflation. Laws have unintended consequences.
And regarding higher taxes: The extra money taken from the rich may make activists feel good, but they're fooling themselves if they think that money actually goes into the wallets of the poor. There is an old fable of a man who was given a wish. His request was to see his rich neighbor's house burn down. Did this wish make him better off? No, it just satisified his lust for getting even. The socialist system, being confined to government, which is inherently unproductive, can only make people equal by making everyone poor.
Matt Kaufman has an excellent essay at Boundless, Setting Priorities, talking about the viewpoint differences of religious progressives and traditionalists. He says it's not at all obvious that a viewpoint of compassion requires a commitment to national health care, among other things.
In today's Opinion Journal, Joseph Loconte discusses how "The Angry Left finds religion, and the result isn't pretty."
I see your points, but not necessarily the logic.
Instead of being the government the one setting the limits to what is 'national health', you are saying that it should be private companies. So when the poor old man is denied a feeding tube by a private company (on the same cost/coverage rationale) things will be better? Nonesense...
Minimum wages are not (only) about 'lifting the poor out of poverty', its objective are many and is not free. Something to consider: a) ensure a minimum standard of living (ie: food, clothing, etc). and b) avoid exploitation by ruthless companies. With (a) you try to tackle many issues (crime, education, health) at its roots. And (b) is to avoid economic 'slavery'. I'm not saying that it works perfectly, just what the intended investment is, and how you have to measure its performance. There are other (possibly) concurrent measures to include in the analysis. Minimum wages should not be dissected in a vacuum...
True, capitalism is a great generator (and accumulator) of wealth. But one of the worst systems at distribution. You know the old saying "the rich are getting richer, while the poor, poorer"... it's not just a propaganda slogan. The patterns of income and wealth accumulation are there for anybody, honest enough, to see. Go look it up http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/poverty.html
BTW, it's not just poor vs. rich. The issue also includes the percentage of wealth that each segment of society has. A relatively good executive summary: http://www.epinet.org/books/swa2004/news/swafacts_international.pdf