Taxpayers shouldn't be paying for food stamps and other low income assistance programs in the first place.
No? Wow - I thought the purpose of taxes is to promote the general welfare of every citizen, whether through defense, infrastructure, emergency services, etc.
In a perfect little Utopian-Socialist world, maybe, but no, taxes have never been about promoting the general welfare of every citizen. It's always been about benefiting those in power, be they a state government or equivalent, or a kingdom, and the things necessary and incidental to those in power staying in power. Some of these things include expenditures on war (to retain power), the enforcement of law and public order (to control the people so they don't overthrow those in power), protection of property (so property owners can pay taxes), economic infrastructure (to keep the money flowing), public works projects (to keep people thriving so they can be happy and keep paying taxes), social engineering (influencing popular attitudes and behavior on a large scale, chiefly to make people think that the purpose of taxes is to promote the general welfare of every citizen), subsidies (to keep the money flowing and taxes coming in), and the operation of government itself.
Records of taxes for the kingdom go back as far as 3000 BC, where anyone with money paid a significant amount, and those without money paid their taxes in forced manual labor in service of the kingdom. In the Bible it tells you to give one-fifth of your harvest to the Pharaoh, who did
not use all that harvest to promote the general welfare of every citizen, let me tell ya, and the other four-fifths you could keep for next year's field seed and food for yourself. Did you know the Rosetta Stone is a tax concession decreed by the new ruler, King Ptolemy V? The decree wasn't so the general welfare of every citizen could be promoted, it was to re-establish the rule of the Ptolemaic kings over Egypt.
And emergency services is exactly what low income assistance should be: temporary help. If it isn't, [as in today's climate], we need to find out why, and fix the underlying problems, not just rant about the lazy people who "don't wanna" work for a living.
The "why" is very simple. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Keep on giving him fish and pretty soon he thinks your fish are his fish, and he has no incentive to learn how to fish.
The 'free market'? Hahahahahahah. Nice theory, but the market is so manipulated and subsidized and corrupted that it hasn't been 'free' for decades, at least.
Yes, and over those last few decades, every free market manipulation, subsidization and corruption can be traced directly to the liberal elite who don't believe in free markets and believe that government should control prices and the market. Congressional legislation is just flooded with it.
Yes, the owners and managers have a responsibility to maintain profitability, but they have gone too far under that umbrella. Decades ago, when managers earned [excuse me: were paid] 100 times what the workers were, no one complained, because the workers were paid enough to have a life, modest though it be.
Oh, they complained, long and loud, because the workers were making very little. Liberal unions changed that, somewhat, but they took it too far under the same umbrella and priced themselves out of the market. They tried to control the market, and did for quite a while, but then the economy turned to a global one and they didn't have the juice. That's why the number of employed United Auto Workers (and their membership) is a pathetic fraction of what it used to be. That's why foreign auto makers are making cars and trucks in this country in non-union shops. That's why Hostess went out of business and is now operating with non-union workers. The unions got greedy, and the free market ate them and their artificially inflated wages up like a deep-fried Twinkie.
Only the management wasn't satisfied, and kept paying themselves more, and more, and more, until it is now at some ludicrous point. And when they get there by cutting the wages [or just refusing to increase them year after year], then we have a big problem: lower income people can't afford to pay for basic necessities, much less obtain education to improve their skills and earning abilities.
Two major things happened over that time that you're ignoring. One is we moved from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, where individual jobs are less valuable because less skill and training is required to perform them, and the second is management can pay themselves more not because they pay the workers less (or refuse to raise wages), but because of increased market share (larger businesses, more stores) which gives management more net profit to reap, along with more responsibility for which to be compensated. If you and your truck can become more efficient and you end up getting to keep more money after expenses, you're likely gonna keep it. But if you look at an individual Walmart, for example, the profit margins aren't ludicrous at all. They make about a ten percent net profit. There's not a lot of room for high wages for those jobs, especially since they aren't high value jobs. Paying those employees more than the job is worth, just so they can make more money doing a low value job, is what's ludicrous. The reason Walmart corporation makes a snotload of profits is not because they underpay their workers, but because they have a snotload of stores. It's the difference between being a single-truck owner/operator where income is limited, and being a cigar-chomping fat-cat like Dave who owns a massive fleet of trucks and is raking in millions. Just because he's raking it in doesn't mean he can, or even should, start paying his individual drivers more.
Most Americans are a little funny in that we don't want to let people [esp kids] go hungry, or without basic needs met. It's not Socialism, or Marxism, or Communism, it's just humanity. It's also pragmatic, because hungry and angry people are not exactly beneficial to the public order.
Not wanting people to go hungry is humanity, but they way in which we deal with it in this country is, in fact, Socialism. And no, it's not very pragmatic, because the one constant throughout all of human history is that there has been and always will be the poor and the hungry, and nothing will ever change that, no matter how much money or food we throw at them.
We don't want to enable laziness, but we don't want to enable greed, either.
Greed will always be there whether it's enabled or not. It's human nature. If you discourage greed by taking from those who are greedy, you engender more greed. Laziness is the same way, it's human nature. And if you give the lazy a way to remain lazy, you foster laziness. The one immutable truth about the poor is, the more money you spend on fighting poverty, the more poverty we have. There's no getting around that one, simple fact. There hasn't been a single instance in all of human history where money has reduced poverty, much less eradicated it.
A thing is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it, period.
Be it a widget or a job. Period.
Responsibility extends further than the shareholders, though, to the society and the government that enables the business to succeed and prosper, IMO.
That's pretty funny considering the single biggest burden on business is government, in regulations and taxes. The government doesn't enable the business to succeed, the business succeeds in spite of the government.
