That's just the capitalists outright purchasing the legislators, so Walmart can employ people at minimum wage and let the taxpayers foot the bill for their healthcare and food stamps.
Do those people magically start needing food and healthcare once they're employed by walmart? Why is it suddenly walmarts problem the moment they become a walmart employee? Would anyone stakeholder in this situation (the employees, society, walmart) be better off if the employee was no longer employed?
If we had a USB or negative income tax system then that benefit would be clearly spread across the whole population evenly but instead the stamp system has many rules and restrictions that allow Walmart to strategically benefit by both positioning the role at just the right amount to qualify for the benefit (but no more) and frustratingly by being the vendor honouring the stamps.
But we do? The EITC is basically a negative income tax.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit
>I think the argument is that their labour is being subsidised which amounts to a benefit for BigSam.
Ironically negative income taxes are closer to a labor "subsidy", than food stamps, because they're contingent on income (ie. labor), unlike food stamps which don't give you more money if you make more.
Imagine believing in historicism in 2024. It is even dumber than believing in witchcraft or horoscopes.
Additionally, most of the government handouts we see are going to large corporations or the military.
This was not what I was criticising. It was about turning someone’s life into entertainment and, in this extreme GoFundMe example, the right to life becoming a function of how entertaining one is.
> (by definition a socialist or communist structure)
Socialism and communism are not about government handouts. Both are about controlling the means of production (industries, farms) by the people (implying democratic representation). You might correctly argue that the Soviet Union was not a shining beacon of how to implement it, and this is what details almost every discussion on the subject.
India as implemented Socialism btw. Which lead to economic crisis[0]
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Indian_economic_crisis
It sounds like a classic balance of payments issue (importing too much compared to exports/tourism/other revenues) being hit with an exploding in price critical import (oil). Sri Lanka had the same issues just a few years back, was it "socialism" too?
[0] https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/india-and-the-tragedy-of-soci...
Nationalising a bunch of critical industries isn't "socialism" and the article utterly fails to explain how it is or why it's related. Historical UK, and modern France, Russia, UAE, Saudi Arabia also had multiple crucial industries which were fully nationally owned. Were they socialist too?
Some companies were even prosecuted for producing more than what was allowed. This was at least Nehru's (first Prime Minister) version of Democratic Socialism.
Frankly, to me, it’s also one of the most annoying “look at how smart I am” terms online; especially considering there is nothing capitalist about how olympians or healthcare are funded. Criticizing a system built mostly on government handouts (by definition a socialist or communist structure) as being a late-stage capitalism problem shows you’ve got no clue what these terms actually mean.