If we allow the question to be framed as selfishness vs. spreading the wealth, we have already lost. The follow up to Sen. Obama on his comment to Joe the Plumber should have been, “yes, Senator, spreading the wealth is good. But what did you think I was going to do with the money I kept? I would invest it in my neighbors, I would purchase goods and services from them, and I would likely give to charity. The case you need to make, Senator, is that the clumsy apparatus of the Federal government is better than I am at doing those things with my money.”

My uncharitable view is that those most dismissive of the benefits of leaving people their own money are projecting their own covetousness on others. They believe that people will not do good things with their own money because they wouldn’t. Compare the charitable giving of Joe Biden vs. Dick Cheney (who gave something like 4 million to charity out of 6 million in income.)

Or maybe they so misunderstand charity that they feel the spiritual benefits of sacrifice can be obtained by forcing someone else to sacrifice in their place.

P. J. O’Rourke once calculated that the sum of Federal assistance to the poor, divided by a generous estimate of the number of poor, would result in an annual amount of income over the poverty line. That are are still poor people is not an indication that we are downright mean, but that poverty programs are much more about funding government employees than alleviating poverty.