Then who did? Without that donation the money would be used by the government to fund something (say a new road, or a bankers job), but because of that donation the government lets Joe spend it instead. Or are you just arguing semantics, that is, either that because the government hasn't sent Joe a cheque for that amount (instead prefering to make things far simpler by just netting off the amount they owe Joe against the amount Joe owes them) that they haven't given it to him, Or that even when Joe gives that money to the government it is still his not theirs, and so he can't be given what is already his and you'd instead use some other phrase to describe how he ends up with $3k more money to spend.

Regardless of what semantics you try to argue though, Joe now has ~$3k more to spend thanks to the government. Jill meanwhile gets ~$1k more to spend thanks to the government, even though they both gave the same amount of money. Joe gets more to spend as a result of the amount spent than Jill because 3>1.

I don't know why I bother trying to explain this to you when you seem to have such difficulty with even the simplist of concepts, but here goes:

You go to your local shop which offers a 'buy now, pay next week' service, and you buy $100 of food. After buying the food, you go and give $10 of it to a homeless person. The next day you go to that shop and the owner comes out, applauds you for how you helped the homeless person, and gives you $5. Now just so I can see what part of this you're not understanding, there are two scenarios. A: you tell the owner he can just put the $5 against the $100 you owe him to make things simpler, so that now you owe him $95. B: You take the $5 in cash and thank him.

Now, would you accept you have been given money in either of those situations?

and without me robbing them homeless people would use their money to buy food and drugs... I just keep on giving to the homeless by not robbing them.

and if joe DONATED THE MONEY he isn't spending it, its not his anymore.

Choosing not to take from someone as much as you COULD have taken is not the same as giving. The money was inherantly JOE's, not the Government's. You assume all money belongs to the government, and however much it lets you keep is however much it GAVE you.

It is not semantics, it is a fundamental difference.

He's spending the money on someone else. You really will argue anything, won't you! Anyway I've had enough - I've no desire to waste any more of my time trying to explain the most basic of points to someone displaying an intellect little above that of a gnat. Argue all you want about whether giving someone money is actually giving them it, or at what point the ownership of that money changes, but at the end of the day the rich person gets $3 more to spend to the poor person's $1. If you still can't see how that $3 is more than the $1, you need your head examined.

Based on this statement I think you believe that money belongs to the government and they let us have it. In reality the money is ours, we earn it. through a social compact we agree to pay our fair share of the government in order to protect us where we can not protect ourselves. It is still our money and we send representitives to Washington in order to administer our money. They don't let us have money we let the government have money to do specific things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyOHJa5Vj5Y

As for your whole semantics argument...

"All major terrorist attacks on the us since 2000 were performed by muslims" =! "All muslims performed major terrorist attacks on the us since 2000". Minor changes in sentence structure can completely change its meaning in a fundamental manner. Your "semantics" are anything but, they are major changes to the meaning.

Aerotar, you seem to believe that money is the property of the government and the government's role is to decide how much money each citizen can have.

If that is the case, there is no point in having this discussion because we are working from different premises.

I see the government as simply another service provider that we pay for via taxation. I don't look at the government as something that "rules me" or as an entity that I exist to serve. I look at the government much the same way as I look at the electric company or the cable company. 

The money I earn by trading my skills/labor for is inherently mine that I use to purchase products and services. The way the goverment bills me for its services is determined by elected representatives.  

So I can't begin to undersand how you see the government "giving" me money through the rationale of any money that I earn that they don't take is somehow a gift.

And, your point would be?  What do you mean by 'gets'?  Giving money away never leaves you with more money than you started with, no matter the tax deductibility.

That point says it all. But here's the rub, there are folks out there that feel the electric company should be charging people who make more money, more for their electricity and some should gt it for little or nothing. I made that point a long time ago, if say McDonald's charged more for a hamburger if you were rich and gave them out for free if you were poor. They would be out of business soon as many "rich" people would stop coming by, and the number of "poor' people eating their would increase. The same holds true for the government, who by the way, now want to hire more workers (expand) to hand out the free "burgers".

It never ceases to amaze me who the individuals that cry for fairness, really don't want anything fair. To be truly fair everyone should pay the same, get the same deductions (or none). I wonder what they would say if they went to buy a car and the poor person before them drove off for free. Then the salesman says I tacked the price of that car onto your contract. Would they smile an say fine or have a hissy fit on the show room floor? I would expect the later. They see the concept when it it their personal money and lose it when they see all Americans money. This argument is pointless to those personality types.

[1] is very debatable. It depends greatly on the area a person lives in. Areas with less established public transit systems may not give this option. Areas with more expensive public transit systems may be near as expensive as car ownership and yield no assets for the cost. Here in Vegas, have fun waiting for a bus out in 100+ degree heat, hoping it isn't running behind...and if you live in a less than convient location, have fun walking that half-mile to mile to the bus stop in that heat.

[2] I would definitely agree with.

[3] is iffy. If you're selling cherished assets to take care of basic necessities, you've probably already sold the other non-essentials; how this isn't at least marginally approaching "poor" I don't know.

[4] agreed owning a personal computer is a luxury.

[5] true within reason. If you can't scratch enough together to splurge on a pack of gum or condiments for the dinner described in [7] after taking carre of necessities, that pretty much fits my definition of poor.

[6] yeah, not poor.

[7] no, not poor, but what about when the grocery store is farther away? What about getting to the point you have to actually sit down to do the math to find out if this is actually cheaper(per unit of nutrition) after calculating in the cost to cook the meal.

If we went by your definition, a person isn't truly poor until they've lost every possession, are homeless, possibly starving, wearing rags, and unemployable (having no address or reliable means of contact). That may be one definition of poor, but I personally would prefer to have a minimum acceptable level of human existence higher than subsistence.

I think a problem in this conversation is too many stereotypes being thrown around on both sides. If the worst that were said here were true, all poor people would be lazy, drug-addicted, morons who it is insinuated "get what they deserve", and all rich people would be conniving, cheating manipulators who hoard what is the rightful wealth of others.