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So it should also be voluntary to "feeding and housing our fellow countrymen" and not having your money automatically "diverted"?

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Ideally yes. But if you're going to have a government with forced taxation, it should at least take care of the fucking people before it starts spending billions of dollars on non-essential activities.

> it should at least take care of the fucking people before it starts spending billions of dollars on non-essential activities

Let’s put aside that none of the current cuts have anything to do with helping the needy.

Societies that focus on subsistence subsist. Societies that focus on thriving thrive. ROI is a real thing. Just taking care of people, paradoxically, short changes those folks in the long run. The most productive thing a government can do is long-term investments. JWST—and the skilled labour that goes into it—is one such investment.

(Another is education, which unfortunately is required to understand how investing for the long run works.)

And if those "non essential activities" result in economic growth and thus leading to more work places and fewer people living in poverty long term?

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