Talk about your false dichotomies
You either think the government food stamp program is a sham, a waste, and destructive, or you don't.
I think it's a crock of schitt that 42 million people can't find work that pays them enough to buy food for their families. Hell, yes, I'm defending it; it's keeping people alive. What's the other option? Swift's elegant solution? Did you read anything at any of the links I provided below? Or that anybody else has provided? Or did you discount the information in them because your preconceptions make it difficult to impossible for you to consider that a government program outside defense might be useful?
And before you go off about helping, yes, I help when I can; so do millions of others. I suspect even you help when possible. But the help that's provided isn't enough to do more than stave off starvation. The help that is needed most is a living wage for full-time workers, and, given the conduct of business in such an environment (cf. Gilded Age), your anti-regulation, free-market stance essentially means you're against that, too!
Is the USA, as you have previously described it, the "greatest nation on the face of the Earth"? Does it do its best to take care of all its citizens, with the government stepping in when private organizations cannot? Or is it just another third-world nation with the wealth and income concentrated in the hands of a very few, with the remainder of the population fighting to survive in the face of a system that tells them all they have to do to improve themselves is work, while denying them the chance?
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