Literally the entire point of a safety net for individual people is to prevent people from falling into despair and dying (of starvation or illness) due either to poor decisions or pure chance. To remove said safety net is to say that you value having a bit more money over people's lives - you would prefer that people die than lose money.
To put that a way you might understand - humans have an almost universally recognised right to food, water, shelter and medical care because these things are really, really important. To deny people those things is to say that those things are less important than having a little more money. You can't seriously be saying that.
The parent can seriously be saying that. People believe different things, many people believe that they have no responsibility to other humans that they do not know. Further there are those that believe humans may be in someway responsible for other humans that they do not know, but that the government is absolutely the wrong vehicle to address this responsibility.
Personally, I think for people like that, who think that "taxes are theft" and that they shouldn't have to pay for stuff they don't agree with, that we should allow them to opt out of paying taxes and the entire social contract.
In exchange, they give up all police protection. If someone wants to rob them or kill them, no problem, it's not a crime and the police won't intervene.
Literally the entire point of a safety net for individual people is to prevent people from falling into despair and dying (of starvation or illness) due either to poor decisions or pure chance. To remove said safety net is to say that you value having a bit more money over people's lives - you would prefer that people die than lose money.
To put that a way you might understand - humans have an almost universally recognised right to food, water, shelter and medical care because these things are really, really important. To deny people those things is to say that those things are less important than having a little more money. You can't seriously be saying that.