No, it's an argument that social programs are smart, and prevent pain in the future. Long-term benefits are not extortion.

Is eating healthy and exercising extortion? Is investing in education to get a better job extortion? Is saving money to take advantage of compound interest extortion? No, it's all just long-term decision making.

You're describing a protection racket.

Only if the people getting the pennies demanded them in exchange for not cutting internet cables. Countries in the early 20th Century that did not have social programs, Russia, Germany after WW1, found large masses of discontented and starving people were fertile ground for populist messages. If those people had been well fed history might have taken a different course.

Somehow rich elites are fertile grounds for socialist message no less than the discontented starving people.

Well, not rich elites, mainly educated but not rich elites.

For some reason, being on the winning side of capitalism seems to inoculate people against ideas of socioeconomic justice

>This sounds a like an argument that social programs are extortion

I think the point is that human behavior at scale is not really that different from natural disasters. Not protecting against poverty in your surroundings would be comparable to building in a flood zone. Fixing that problem is not extortion anymore than building dams is paying protection money to the sea - there's no poor people shouting "cover my basic needs or else", but we know enough about our own race to know the issues that emerge with poverty.