| And, if it costs me more in taxes, then I'm willing to pay those taxes. It's a much more worthwhile expense than a war I do not believe in, and am thoroughly convinced was waged based on lies and selfish enterprises. |
Frankly, dabe, I agree with this statement 100%. And see, there's yet another reason I believe that the LP proposals offer a better solution.
You see, the LP proposes a dollar for dollar tax credit for donations to private charities. This means that under their proposal, individuals such as you and I could "vote with our wallet" and direct our tax liability towards charities that work to heal instead of kill.
The food stamp program, though, is riddled with flaws. For one, the amounts distributed are insanely huge. This is why you see many food stamp recipients buying steaks; after they've bought the food they need, there's simply TOO MUCH left for them to know what to do with. This is ESPECIALLY true of the frugal families; as someone who has received aid when we've needed it on a few occasions, I can tell you for a fact that when you've spent the $200 or so a month on food your family NEEDS and STILL have $400 left, that same sense of frugality tells you it's a waste not to use it. In our case, we used it on nonperishables so that we would have food left and not need to reapply after our six month period, but too many families don't think for the future. And why should they? There's simply no incentive.
The thing is, our approach to welfare does nothing to promote long term self reliance. For any effective program to work, this needs to change. And employees of the welfare system are not in the proper place to assess and meet a family's true needs. There are many needs that are not/cannot be met by the programs in place. For instance, my wife virtually never gets to leave our community of 500. Why, you ask? Well, simply because she does not drive (and teaching her's a losing battle; I learned that years ago), and we cannot fit all seven of our family into a regular passenger car. We desperately need a van, and with my salary which barely covers our needs and the fact that even a barely running minivan will set you back at least $2500 in this market, that ain't happening. And yet, needed transportation is one thing we cannot get through any of the programs in place (going further: In Pahrump, where most of the jobs to be had require a 60 mile commute to Vegas or Death Valley, and even the local jobs are often 20 miles away, we were unable to obtain transportation to get to and from work. That's why we had to leave).
Frankly, programs such as the food stamp program have forced us as a society to become overly reliant on the government and not to come together as a community. But because government programs are horribly limited in their scope, we need to look to private charities for more effective, longterm solutions.
