The Basics

There are a few key principles that, when understood, clarify the relationship that a government should have with the citizens:

The government doesn't create wealth:

Wealth is created through more efficient use of resources. The government can create money, but the creation of money, when unaccompanied by productivity, doesn't increase wealth; it only causes inflation. In fact, the incentives that government-run organization face encourage inefficency; therefore, the greater the portion of a nation's production that a government produces, the less efficient, as a whole, the economy tends to be.

Because the government is not a wealth creator, the money it distributes, whether through spending programs or "entitlements," can only be a redistribution of wealth. That means that every dollar the government gives to someone is a dollar taken from someone else.

If there is a natural law, it must certainly be a caveat of that law that one is never entitled to someone else's property unless both parties have freely entered into an agreement to transfer property.

It is a distortion of reality to suggest that anyone has a right to anything that depends on another's positive actions, because that necessarily requires the other's rights to be taken. The idea of natural law suggests that the rule proposed would apply in an environment without forceful human intervention. Property rights are based on this understanding. That is why is cannot be a natural right to be entitled to someone elses production; if that person were not around to produce the goods, then that person simply could not have those goods, despite all of the laws made to the contrary. Rights dependent on another's indepedent actions cannot be natural rights. Property rights, however, are natural, since your posession of the results of your own independent actions can be achieved independent of the choices of others.

Given these realities, it is proper to say that you are entitled to the income you create through your labor; however, it is not proper to say that you are entitled to an income. You are entitled to life if you can support it, but you are not entitled to life if it has to be supported by someone else. You are entitled to pursue happiness, but you are not entitled to the things that might create happiness if they depend on someone else.

For instance, if someone enters your home and takes something that you own, without your consent, he is stealing. This is against the law because one is entitled to that which he owns. Why he is entitled to it is outside the scope of this discussion. However, we somehow also agree, through that same democratic consensus, that, if the thief qualifies based on some income criteria, it is likewise just for the government to seize that same property and give it to him.

So, the de facto law is that property rights only exist so far as you don't have too much more of it than another person. That is the sole critera, as determined by progressive tax rates.