For instance, when I question Federal spending on Medicare, my charitable friends often tell me that i'm putting a number on people's lives. I am. because that number exists. For $20 you can provide a person in Africa with clean water for 20 years. Or you can buy my grandmother 1/40th of a new walker. To which belongs our moral responsibility?
"Well, your grandmother's paying into it," my charitable friends retort.
That's a different argument - a claim for mandated (delayed) personal responsibility. But, you're really trying to claim shared responsibility. And if so, then why are we responsible for those within our nation alone? If we're simply trying to be charitable, and we look at the good done per $, we have to turn to malaria nets and micro-nutrients before virtually every U.S. ailment, right?