All of us (including the liberals) have all answered like Bricker did – at least implicitly – through our actions. We all assign a “cost” to helping people. All of us do it.
You are sitting there at your computer typing your post is consuming electricity that could warm a homeless person on this cold winter’s night. We could certainly tax all citizens more to the point that they can no longer afford to turn their thermostats up as high. Big deal, they can just wear sweaters so that the homeless and poor can stop shivering. We take away a little comfort from the people in heated homes to give warmth to poor folks that have no heat at all. I see no liberals volunteering for such an arrangement. There’s a word for that type of inconsistent behavior: it starts with an “h”.
There are infinite ways we can help society that can be reworded into gotcha questions of selfishness and morality.
For example, we could propose to post guards at all bus stops to prevent child abduction. If someone dares to raise the issue of cost, we can just use the weapon of emotional appeal, “the cost estimations are irrelevant because us moralists on our high-horse believe it is our societal duty to prevent a child from being kidnapped.”
You can use that technique for everything.
Then get together all the like-minded folks and pay for everyone else’s health care. Oh that’s right – that’s not enough, you also want the money from the folks who don’t agree with you.