Why I dont feel sorry for the rich having to pay more taxs

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to the point where he still is one of the prime subject of comedians the world over.

The bread analogy is a good one. If you force everyone to buy government bread at the point of a gun, then you:

• Preclude any alternative means of feeding oneself. This not only includes currently known methods, but methods which aren't currently known. Maybe I want to make my own bread, or use a tortilla, or eat better quality or less expensive bread.

• Eliminate market forces thus making it impossible to know a) How much bread to make b) What the price should be c) what are the opportunity costs of buying bread for $3 a loaf d) what quality and type of bread to make. Not only are we unable to perform the economic calculation necessary to determine how many resources to dedicate to bread, there are other entrepreneurial functions which are impossible to perform. For example does the government run the bread factory at 100% output and wear it out sooner, or at 80% and make it last longer. This involves not only time preference, but predicting future demands and costs. Bureaucrats do not succeed or fail based on money they personally invested and are wholly unable to perform this task.

• Set the stage for institutional corruption. Regardless of whether the bread-maing is contracted out or is made within the bureaucratic machine (like a massive vertically integrated monopoly), someone is going to benefit from this bread-making privilege and we end up with rent-seekers. There has never been a system of welfare or rationing or public utility without such corruption. Ultimately, the only regulation which matters is the ability to refuse payment. This is true regardless if you're talking about payment via taxes or having to buy from a privileged monopoly or not being allowed to remove your money from a banking institution. No amount of rule-making will remove corruption if we're forced to pay.

Welfare has two forms that I can think of:

SNAP -- foodstamps (normally ~30 billion, now around ~80 billion with economy as it is). 2/3rds goes to poor families with disabled people, kids or the elderly.
TANF -- for poor families with kids (~20 billion / year). There is a five year lifetime limit and you have to work 30-50 hours per week.

What many people don't know is that SNAP is actually pushed for by famers. It's a farming subsidy administered by the Department of Agriculture and would have been shut down if not for agricultural lobbying. They want people to eat who otherwise might not because ultimately it moves their products.

You could entirely eliminate both programs and not put much of a dent in the 1.2 trillion yearlydeficit. And for comparison, under Bush the Republicans passed the Medicare drug expansion, which today is costing $60 billion a year and was not offset with new taxes. But old people might vote more than poor people so maybe it was bribe money well spent.