Deneteus,

The essence of my article was that most of us are both capitalists and socialists and that one need not be one extreme or the other. At a societal level each society decides how much socialism they are prepared to “sustain” and even for what purpose. Most of that occurs through taxes and entitlements, but it also occurs through charitable giving.

But when politicians pass “socialistic” entitlements beyond what its people are willing to sustain, then eventually in broad terms the “socialistic” entitlements produce systemic budget deficits which will need to be addressed in the future and will usually involved some form of “austerity” or entitlement cuts.

You do introduce another key element to “kinship”. “Kinship” can be eroded by the behavior of people receiving “entitlements”. In recent months a large number of homeless people were relocated to our town by the county. People have mixed emotions since most of them at one level or another want to help the homeless.

But they get angry when our “tourist” areas are littered with used needles and the homeless panhandle to raise money from the tourists making them feel uncomfortable. In effect, the homeless are hurting our local economy that is trying to feed them and provide them shelter. In addition, a number of homeless have been caught committing petty crimes. And so the desire to “help” is slowly being eroded and anger is replacing compassion.