[ShakeZula06]

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Look at the poor vs. rich divide from a utilitarian standpoint (not the only explanation, but one of the easier ones): for obvious reasons, a society where poor people are allowed to starve to death, or one where the gap between the rich and the poor is too large, tends to produce more crime than one that is comparatively egalitarian.

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The more open the market is the more wealth will be produced. The more wealth produced doesn't automatically go to the rich, it also helps out the poor! Just check out the living standards of the poor in highly socialized economies. Or check out democratic socialist Chile with tons of intervention in the economy which has produced the eighth most unequal wealth distribution in the world. Wealth distribution was much more even under the market heavy policies of Pinochet.

Just look at what the government spends money on today. Do you think a bunch of rich opportunists (something like every third memeber of congress is a millionaire) are more likely to spend government taxes on simply giving them away to the poor, or give it away in the form of fat overpriced contracts to their friends in the private sector?

Get rid of the war on drugs, inflation tax, sales tax, and the property tax and you'll see poor people's real wealth improve a lot. This is just another case of the government masquerading as it's own cure.
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The AC solution seems to be to bypass this entirely and say "well, redistribution of income is theft, and if it turns out it's cheaper for the rich to all hire security guards, the market will do that, instead", which is an almost sociopathic answer

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What the hell is sociopathic about it? Should we also pay off every person not to murder us? $X a week to every non-murderer?
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that only makes sense if every human being on the planet is literally engaged in a game with money as a scoresheet.

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Well I think it's pretty clear to you that it is when you say this:
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in the best interest of the upper class to subsidize the poor so that they don't mug the rich. However, it's just as clearly not in the best interest of any one particular wealthy individual to do so

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Anyways, last year Americans made the apparently irrational decision to donate $295 billion to charity last year. Your analysis doesn't jive with the facts. There are a lot of people that enjoy helping out others. Those people probably aren't going to be the rich power hungry people elected office disproportionately selects for. In that way the government systematically takes money away from those that are generally concerned with the poor and puts in the hands of those that just pretend to.