Why Welfare, Food Stamps, etc. Are Not Similar to Slavery

It has become a fairly common tactic on parts of the right to compare government programs, such as Food Stamps and Welfare, to slavery. There are a number of problems with this comparison, which I will explain here. To be clear, there may be some good arguments against certain government programs, but this is not one of them.

The first and possibly the most obvious problem is that slavery involved humans owning other humans and being literally allowed to do whatever they want to their slaves. Government programs involve some level of dependence on another person (which is probably part of why government programs get compared to slavery), which brings me to the next problem with this comparison.

The second problem is that the motive behind this comparison would necessarily entail that the person making it oppose things even they probably would rightly not think to oppose. One example of such is living at home from infancy to adulthood, and being provided for by our parents. From the philosophy of someone making this comparison, it would be better for an infant or small child to be left outside and starve to death than to be "enslaved" by having to be taken care of by their parents.

Due to everything stated above, it is probably safe to assume that deep down, what the people who compare government programs to slavery are actually concerned about is not that they are like slavery, but rather that our tax dollars pay for those things. It is unlikely that any rational person would truly believe that people who need help are enslaved by needing help. Hence, it is entirely possible that those who make the comparison are referring to the fact that they have to pay taxes for it, which they likely views as being similar to slavery. Is having to pay taxes for it analogous to slavery? Only if you assume that most if not all of the people being helped by that are all lazy and not doing anything for themselves by their own personal choice. There is no question that there are people who that is true for, but we should keep in mind that there are also plenty of people who genuinely do need assistance. We are all born into unique situations and environment can and does play a role in what we are able do. Some might still argue that the problem remains that those taxes aren't voluntary, and there is truth to that. At the same time though, most laws are involuntary as well, for instance. For example, most of us would probably prefer to not have to pay a ticket for speeding and when we pay a ticket, we usually are doing that involuntarily and would say no to it if it was legal to do so. Even going to school as children is rarely voluntary as the law requires children to attend to school until a certain age. Lots of things in life are not voluntary, but that alone does not make them wrong.

Underneath it all, I think it would be better for people who oppose things like Welfare and Food Stamps to be direct and say that they do not like that their tax dollars are paying for these things. Comparing them to slavery is simply semantics and does not hold for the reasons given above.