“A full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.” -Mark Twain

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“It is difficult for me to imagine what ‘personal liberty’ is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread.” -Joseph Stalin

Thom Hartmann invited Libertarian Republic Editor Austin Petersen back on The Big Picture to debate over whether cuts in food stamps are a good idea or not. Hartmann’s argument was that libertarians don’t care about whether or not people die in the streets from hunger or that they simply don’t understand economics. Although it is strange to hear that coming from an ideology that is based on nothing more than redistribution of wealth that capitalism had to accrue in the first place. Most socialist arguments begin with acknowledging that capitalism works, but that we must steal this wealth and give it to corrupt government officials who will then be trusted to give it to the poor.

In 2011, under Barack Obama’s watch, the amount of Americans on food stamps jumped from 17 million to 45 million.

Over 100 million people (1 in 3 Americans) are on some form of welfare, not counting Social Security and Medicare. Spending on food stamps is slated to reach $800 billion over the next decade. Despite the fact that Socialism killed 50 million people over the last century, it hasn’t dissuaded some people from the argument that doing violence to wealthy people and taking their money hasn’t helped poor people one bit. But some people still can’t seem to grasp that free people, left alone to their own devices, will create an economy that lifts more people out of poverty than coerced redistribution.

The video is below: