Baalzamon said:
Just no. Less free money will convince people to do something with their life. Not to mention...if these programs are being cut, why are more people sucking money out of them now than ever. |
Comments like that disgust me. Most of the people who are on Food Stamps or something equivalent are not lazy or stupid, and most of them would love to be doing something more productive with their lives. Unfortunately, when there are more people than jobs, as is the case in most countries, and especially in America, it's not always an option. And then there's the people who work multiple jobs, and STILL aren't earning enough to survive.
And what's more, programs like that actually stimulate the economy, creating more jobs and therefore enabling more people to stop needing the programs. Unfortunately, when you have many people suddenly thrown into poverty due to a financial meltdown caused, when it comes down to it, by the US government (by removing the regulations that would have prevented it), there's inherently going to be a massive increase in the number of people dependent on such programs, resulting in a significant increase in the number of "people sucking money out of them". Indeed, as things improve, the rate of people going onto such programs has decreased dramatically, and has practically stabilised right now - should economic improvement continue, one would expect the number of people on these programs to decrease on their own.
Note that I'm not suggesting that everybody on food stamps is a legitimate case of people truly trying to survive on their own, but failing. But the vast majority are. Trying to remove such programs, or dramatically curtail them, to prevent the abuse is akin to putting everybody in a neighbourhood in jail because one person in that neighbourhood committed murder. Or firing everybody in a department because one employee was looking at porn at work.
Anyway, the question in the thread title is a nonsensical one, anyway. Socialism doesn't exist in America. It barely exists here in Australia. And programs like Food Stamps aren't socialist in any sense. Socialism is government ownership of the means of production (see China and all of the companies owned by the Chinese government - to be clear, ownership of banks does not count as owning the means of production). This is government spending money in a way that it considers to be of benefit to the people, that cannot be achieved through private activity alone. Charity will never be enough to cover the costs of feeding all of the homeless, the poor, etc.
This is almost as bad as confusing Socialism with Communism - two completely different systems of "government" only related through the fact that one famous person suggested one as a stepping stone to the other.
What Food Stamps are is a pragmatic process by which money is spent wisely in one way to prevent having to spend it in another way. Food Stamps help to reduce the crime rate by reducing poverty (money would have to be spent on police and jails, and other parts of the economy would falter due to increased crime). Food Stamps help to reduce health problems through better nutrition (money would have to be spent on hospitals and other health services). Food Stamps result in more business for farmers and for companies that distribute food, whether wholesale, retail, or transport (economic boost). Food Stamps improve the lives of children in poverty, enabling them to study better at school (reducing educational costs associated with trying to bring standards up, and also resulting in a better-educated workforce in the future, thus boosting the future economy).
Programs like SNAP are actually incredibly good ways to spend government money. For every dollar spent on SNAP, the economy is boosted by $1.73 (according to economists). By comparison, the Bush tax cuts, on being made permanent, had a fiscal multiplier of just 0.29 - meaning, for every $1 decrease in tax revenue, there was a corresponding increase in the economy of just 29 cents. This is just one reason for programs like Food Stamps being maintained, and an entirely capitalist one at that.
It's kind of like how money gets spent on efforts to reduce the rate of smoking in teens. It's more money spent immediately, but the long-term reduction in money needing to be spent (on health, mostly, plus economic difference due to greater productivity) because fewer teens take up smoking easily outweighs this up-front spending.
In short, programs like these are an investment, with relatively little risk and a lot of reward. And that's before you factor in the fact that society should help the poorest within it, and try to improve the quality of life across the board - that is, the idea that empathy is a positive trait in society.
