Now that Rand Paul is considered by some to be the frontrunner for the 2016 Republican nomination, expect to hear a barrage of libertarian nonsense about "entitlements" and how no one has any right to anything beyond life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (interesting how the founders omitted "property"). In fact, we do have a right to things beyond the big three inalienables and we need to defend that right with the same stalwart determination as we would those rights we've come to believe "inalienable."
What libertarians omit when discussing the social safety net is the socio-economic context in which these things are being demanded. If we add to the existing Americans living at or below the federal poverty line (FPL), about 46.5 million people, the number of people defined by the US Census Bureau as "near poor" (those between 100% and 125% of the FPL) which was about 14.7 million people (in 2012) we get more than 61 million people or about 20% of the entire US population at or very near the FPL. We are told that many of these people work, some full time, and are raising families. We read this in a policy brief by The Working Poor Family Project;
Between 2007 and 2011, the share of working families that are low-income—below 200 percent of the official poverty threshold—increased annually and rose from 28 percent to 32 percent nationally...About 11 percent of working families were below the official poverty line in 2011 ($22,811 for a family of four with two children)As is well known many of these working families receive public assistance in some form or another. The point is that more and more people are considered by some measure or another "working poor"-people who work full time but still can't obtain a minimum level of subsistence. Many of these people work for the largest US multinational corporations such as Walmart and McDonalds who have quickly become the largest employers of low wage labor. Libertarians speak in a total vacuum about "entitlement" when they neglect to mention that the majority of the people they speak about not only work, but work hard for some of the world's richest corporations (whose low wages are being subsidized at various levels of government). According to recent statistics one in three Americans can be considered working poor and yes, they are entitled to a just share of the fruit of labor!!