Welfare and other public entitlement programs should be abolished in the US.

You bring up the point of hunger and starvation. To dive into this issue we must go back to pre industrial France. Before Capitalism, before industrialization. During this time, hunger was a real problem. It was one of the highest, if not the highest cause of death- a great deal of children did not even reach adulthood. Then, slowly, over the years- a change swept over Europe- the industrial revolution. The Industrial Revolution brought prosperity to European countries that accepted it though Capitalism. This raised the standards of living of the average person up drastically. Only later did people decide that what they had was just not quite enough, and decide to move on toward more socialistic policies. Industrialization and capitalism is what brings people out of starvation and hunger, not socialism. Compare Pre-Industrialized countries with developed countries. In the United States, hardly anybody dies of starvation. In parts of Africa, starvation is the leading cause of death. Hunger is not heard of in modern capitalistic countries. Look at the USSR- a socialist country which, while providing welfare for all of their citizens failed to do so terribly and caused the deaths of millions of people- from starvation. You say we need welfare programs as if welfare programs are the only ways of obtaining food. How are people supposed to make money anyways? Well- most people make their money by contributing to the economy, becoming laborers. There are jobs out there- not ideal jobs, but jobs so long as you wish to take them. If hunger were really an issue, you would have strong incentive to get a job- especially if you had a child. Even the 'poor' in the US are comparably rich. Poor people in the US have great luxuries not shared by peoples separated by generations of time or by oceans. The poor in the US today have a home or apartment, they have air conditioning, they have refrigerators, microwaves, color television sets and VCR's. The poor are not building mud huts, hoping someday for food- food is an afterthought, on welfare or not. Do the current welfare programs even work? Current welfare programs always give a person an incentive to stay where they are. It's not that they are lazy, so much as that they are stuck. If you could get free money from the government, or the same amount (or less) money from going out to work what would you do? You might choose to get the job, but the incentive is to stay in the system. Once you are in the system- it is hard to get out. Children of welfare recipients tend to stay in the system, as it is all they have learned. Public housing systems generally suffer from flaws. Why? Because they do not own them. You have less incentive to take care of things that are yours than things that are not yours. Crime is often found in the public housing projects more so than in communities where ownership is the rule of law. I need to also quickly address the issue of minimum wage. Minimum wage is a idea brought out by people who claim to be in support of the poor. After all, this money sounds great! In reality, it hurts the poor. Where does this money come from, this extra money? Out of the pockets of the businesses? Well, often small businesses can not afford such overhead. Large businesses, who lobby for minimum wage increases such as WalMart like it because it helps eliminate their competition. When you establish minimum wage laws, you force employers to either hire less employees- as the employees are being over paid, you help inflate the economy, as prices will be passed along to consumers, or you get the poor fired- "I can't afford you for 9 dollars an hour, sorry." You try to bring up the issue of starvation in proof of the need of public welfare programs, but what about private welfare programs? If we were to support a capitalist policy, cut taxes by incredible amounts people would have more money to spend. Money to spend on what they choose, including charities. While everybody might not donate to charities, the charities that will not only come up but are already here are more than enough to deal with the few cases of actual need. To close, I will readdress an issue you brought up in your argument. If a situation were to occur when a woman could not even feed her child, who's fault would that be? Clearly it would not be the child's responsibility- he is a child. But then who's responsibility is it to feed children? Societies? Is it my responsibility to feed that child though tax money? No- it is the mothers responsibility to feed her children. If she is so desperately poor to the point where she can not even feed her own children she should have had second thoughts by having children. People should have the absolute right to have children, but with rights come responsibilities. If she shamelessly kills her own child by her own neglect, her own inability to find a job, and inability to find private welfare then it his her fault.