[pvaldes]

Best answer in the thread and a very clever one, IMHO. Fixing things that lead directly to thousands of people falling in poverty each year is better than the neverending cycle of applying patches to mitigate its consequences.

[gt_]

We could call those “patches too. Supporting a free market always requires maintaining an environment that allows it to justify it’s means. It seems there are probably many paths to this end. This is the only proven one as far as I know. In other words, I am not aware of any healthy economies which lack healthy safety nets.

[pvaldes]

This is a false dichotomy. You can, and should have, both: free market and civil rights.