Not to mention crime like theft, fraud, burglaries. But yes, a perpetual underclass has giant negative externalities. The status quo is deeply ingrained to the American psyche - the risk of someone taking advantage of handouts trumps all other concerns.
Not having public bathrooms, but clean up shit from the streets. Not having preventative health care, but still providing legally mandated ambulance rides and critical care. Letting poor people who get an unexpected expense (say medical or car breaks down) fall into unemployment, homelessness and crime or – costliest of all – the prison industrial complex.
Paying the bill isn’t the problem. People are happy to overspend public funds, so this isn’t related to small government or just general tax aversion. The problem is simply that someone might get something they didn’t deserve. So in a perverted way, it’s a kind of a moralistic obsession with fairness.
Not having public bathrooms, but clean up shit from the streets. Not having preventative health care, but still providing legally mandated ambulance rides and critical care. Letting poor people who get an unexpected expense (say medical or car breaks down) fall into unemployment, homelessness and crime or – costliest of all – the prison industrial complex.
Paying the bill isn’t the problem. People are happy to overspend public funds, so this isn’t related to small government or just general tax aversion. The problem is simply that someone might get something they didn’t deserve. So in a perverted way, it’s a kind of a moralistic obsession with fairness.