Welfare programs are beneficial to the country and should be continued

Whether you got your arguments in the alloted section or in the comments, so long as you got them in. It's all good. While I make the contention that social programs and regulation make the country better, they are certainly not perfect. Minimum wage is one area that needs to be revamped. We need a minimum wage, but it needs to be tied to inflation. Too often, when the minimum wage is set, it falls years behind inflation, as it did for 10 years until the Democrats took back Congress in 2006. Companies pay less on minimum wage in relation to their other costs since those other costs are tied to inflation. It astounds me how people with an obvious background in economics still think that wages are the primary drivers of inflation. Wages across the board rarely keep up with rising costs elsewhere. The last 7 years are a perfect example of that. The majority of the country saw their real income fall or barely keep pace with inflation. For example, during "the 24-month period through the second quarter of 2005, the inflation-adjusted wages of an average American grew just 1 percent" (http://money.cnn.com...). It's hard to see how wages, especially among the poor and those making minimum wage, are the drivers of inflation. Instead, the argument that wage earners are responsible for inflation and hurt themselves when they push for higher compensation sounds more like greedy capitalists trying to enrich themselves at the expense of the poorest in their organizations. Instead, companies should push for better health care reforms that stifle medical inflation, as well as energy reform that cuts our dependence on oil. Both changes will cut the real reasons for inflation in our economy. Don't get me wrong, I think capitalism is the best economic system in the world, but it can be very cruel and counter productive if it is left to its own devices. Conservatives hold to the idea of laissez-faire likes its a religion, even when historical fact dispute its infallibility. Before the minimum wage and other regulations that have improved the lives of laborers, the capital system treated labor like a dime a dozen and more like animals than humans. The Iron Law of Wages is a good example of what levels capitalism will sink to without government intervention. It holds that wages will always revert to subsistence levels because any rise in wages leads to a rise in population. Manchester Schoolers thought that the best way to keep people from breeding was to pay them so little that they had no other choice than to work all the hours they could instead of making babies. In actuality, Britain found that poor people had more kids when they lacked the disposable income to spend their free time doing anything besides having sex. The treatment of illegal immigrants on some farms in this country is another example. They are forced to live in company apartments and buy from the company general store. However, rent and prices are so much compared to their wages that they are constantly in debt and can never escape. Without a minimum wage, actual citizens will find themselves in similar situations, just as they were in the early part of the 20th century. As it is, minimum wage earners have to work two or three jobs just to survive, so I shutter at the thought of going back to the old system where companies were allowed to pay their base labor whatever they wanted. Any raise in the minimum wage has much less of an effect on a company's profits then conservatives claim since they represent so small a segment within any company's pay structure. While the minimum wage barely impacts a company's bottom line, raising it gives earners that little bit more of purchasing power, which might just make all the difference to them. If corporations want to keep their labor costs down, perhaps they should stop paying CEO's so much in salary and stock options when all they manage to do is raise a company's stock instead of its profits. Public housing projects have often been touted as the poster child for the failure of government programs. Sure, old projects like Cabrini Green in Chicago were horrible, but failures in implementing a program does not mean the program itself is flawed. It was once thought that if housing projects were consolidated, they would be easier to police. Thus, projects like Cabrini Green were the norm. After decades of failure, it has become obvious that spreading section 8 residents around the city in higher-end complexes provides a much more stable and successful program. City councils can tell developers that any new complexes that go up must include a small percentage of units available to section 8 residents. In return, the developer can receive tax incentives. Whether conservatives want to admit it or not, environment does have an effect on behavior, and residents begin to act like their neighbors. There is a right way and a wrong way to implement programs. Unfortunately, conservatives starve government programs of resources, then point to government failures as reasons for budgets to be cut even further. You can't hand someone a fixed deck and then blame them for losing. Remember, oversight is even harder to maintain when every facet of it has been privatized. Not only does government have to pay the contracts to companies when government functions are privatized, but the government must also pay for oversight to make sure that private companies don't swindle public money. Americans are some of the most charitable people on Earth, so I'm not overly worried about taxes keeping people from giving more. In fact, charitable giving being tax deductible makes that point even more baseless. What's sad is that poorer and middle class people give more in relation to their income than wealthier people, so it isn't a matter of over-taxation, but simple greed and callousness that keeps people from giving. Actually, if you want people to give more, then make the economy more stable by implementing the changes I mentioned above about health care and energy. The more secure people feel about their income and health, the more they give. The idea that taxes are theft is primarily held by those who fail to understand just how good they have it under the current system. Taxes are the price of civilization, which is provided by government. Without the government leveling the playing field through taxes, the wealthy would use their economic power to accumulate more power and severely unbalance the system. Eventually, we'd resemble the typical South American country with a few very wealthy people at the top and a whole lot of poor people at the bottom rather than an industrialized Western democracy. A progressive tax structure, when actually kept progressive, is the best thing to ensure a healthy middle class, which is essential to the health of any economic system. If taxation for government programs was really theft, then providing for the"general welfare" would not be listed in both the preamble and article 1, section 8 of the constitution. And if you don't like the constitution that our country is based on, then YOU CAN GET OUT! (Imagine the South Park redneck voice saying that, and you'll know where my brain is right now). Sorry my round was so long. I couldn't help myself.