Well, that depends on what you mean by "increasing everyone's living standards." If you mean "people have square-root-shaped utility of money, so moving money from rich people to poor people increases total utility," then all that really matters is the redistribution. If you mean "by increasing economic activity, since poor people have lower rates of saving, thus creating more wealth," then... no, wait, the redistribution is still pretty much what matters.
Ah! If you mean "giving poor people more opportunities, thus leading to better use of human capital, increasing everyone's living standards," then you want to give the most help to the poor people who are going to take new opportunities based on more wealth. The question is then, do you have anything in mind when you refer to things that are better than, say, a public education system at providing poor people new opportunities?
If you mean "by increasing economic activity, since poor people have lower rates of saving, thus creating more wealth," then... no, wait, the redistribution is still pretty much what matters.
This appears to be a complete non sequitur. But, yes I do mean "increase the amount of wealth being produced". Which as mwengler points out people have less motivation to create wealth if its going to be redistributed away.
...The question is then, do you have anything in mind when you refer to things that are better than, say, a public education
In line with the results of the poll here, a thread for discussing politics. Incidentally, folks, I think downvoting the option you disagree with in a poll is generally considered poor form.
1.) Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
2.) Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
3.) A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
4.) In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.
If anybody thinks the rules should be dropped here, now that we're no longer conducting a test - I already dropped the upvoting/downvoting limits I tried, unsuccessfully, to put in - let me know. The first rule is the only one I think is strictly necessary.
Debiasing attempt: If you haven't yet read Politics is the Mindkiller, you should.