Our social programs exist to subsidize mega-corporations that don't feel bothered to pay their workers anything above minimum wage. Minimum wage doesn't even get you to the poverty line, so everyone on one applies for social help. It is the greatest bait and switch of our economy; large companies lobby for social programs and lowering the minimum wage. The average person ends up paying the salary of the average worker. Ironically, this is much closer to socialism then any 'fiscal conservative' will make you fear.
Meanwhile, record profits for the mega-corps. Also, our taxes are the lowest they have ever been in 30 years. We have been through 10+ years of war without raising taxes on the rich to accommodate.
Let me add even more controversy to this thread: Why don't we form a branch of the military whose sole purpose is to distribute aid and rebuild? It is much cheaper to give disaster relief than to shoot people. We seem to justify to ourselves that we are doing a service to the world bombing people, so why not do a service by completely rebuilding Haiti after their earthquake or the Philippines? It would be much cheaper and actually increase our image to the world. I find it funny how those ads for the US Navy always show the troops distributing aid, rather than dropping bombs.
Oh but we can't do that! We will be compromising our security! We will be distracted from the economic issues at home! Funny, these arguments are thrown against war too. Too bad we actually compromise our security and ignore economic issues at home when we go to war because of oil, military contracts, and pro-Israel lobbies.
