>How on earth do you propose to enable the poor to bring themselves above the poverty line without a centralised system to manage it?
Using a decentralized system? Food banks, shelters. Get the grubby Fed paws off of it. Maybe the states should run them, even better if the cities did, or even better if good-minded citizens came together and pitched in without the state. Come on, you don't seriously think that the US Federal Government's social safety net is working, do you? We keep plowing more and more money into it and yet the divide between the rich and the poor is getting wider.
"unless a redistribution of wealth and a welfare state is mandated through taxation and social programs..."
Bastiat comes to mind: "[The socialists declare] that the State owes subsistence, well-being, and education to all its citizens; that it should be generous, charitable, involved in everything, devoted to everybody; ...that it should intervene directly to relieve all suffering, satisfy and anticipate all wants, furnish capital to all enterprises, enlightenment to all minds, balm for all wounds, asylums for all the unfortunate, and even aid to the point of shedding French blood, for all oppressed people on the face of the earth.
Who would not like to see all these benefits flow forth upon the world from the law, as from an inexhaustible source? ... But is it possible? ... Whence does [the State] draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary?
...Finally...we shall see the entire people transformed into petitioners. Landed property, agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, industrial companies, all will bestir themselves to claim favors from the State. The public treasury will be literally pillaged. Everyone will have good reasons to prove that legal fraternity should be interpreted in this sense: "Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs." Everyone's effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success."
he was too generous. The suffering classes will ALMOST NEVER have success.
tl;dr: You think you're helping the poor, but if you're using the state to fix a problem, you're usually just lining the pockets of some wealthy or politically connected jerk who subcontracts the work, claiming to do the good works.