> The free market handles these factors just fine.

Then do tell me why companies like Amazon and Walmart get away with, essentially, state subsidies for their employees and why in many parts of the US teachers complain about being massively underfunded, to the point of Oklahoma switching to 4-day school days so teachers can work on the side to earn money?!

Amazon and Walmart don't receive subsidies. Their workers receive subsidies. You may be tempted to ask, "why don't we make Amazon and Walmart pay wages that put workers above the poverty line?" The likely answer is that this would put the companies at a competitive disadvantage and they would end up laying off much of their workforce to stay in business. And now the government is paying an even bigger unemployment subsidy to these former workers.

As for Oklahoma, that's the voters making the decision that cutting school hours is a better choice than to increase teacher spending. Sure you and I don't agree with this choice, but elections say Oklahoma voters do.

To paraphrase Morty, “That sounds like getting subsidies with extra steps.”

Then let me spell it out more explicitly. Some company pays their employees $10 an hour. This isn't enough to get by on, so the government give each of them an extra $2 an hour to spend on necessities (I know, most welfare systems don't pay out hourly just bear with this example). Who is helped by this extra money? Not the company. If you cut the welfare, the company's profits (or losses) remain exactly the same. Their workers will lead worse lives and experience greater hardship. The workers don't find other jobs. If better paying jobs existed they would have taken them already. Thus, it's not a subsidy for the company. It's a subsidy for the worker. Eliminating welfare has zero impact on the company's profits.

This is why making companies pay tax penalties if their workers are on food stamps is a terrible ides. It'd make employers more wary of recipients of welfare, thus making it even harder for poorer minorities, single mothers, etc. to find jobs. And not to mention, it'd create further incentive to outsource or automate these jobs.