When something is so well entrenched and accepted, even if it is actually evil, the chances of getting rid of it, are microscopic. The world is completely inculcated with the idea that government should take from the 'haves' and give to the 'have nots,' in the name of mistaken 'humanity.' An average, non-thinking, 'progressive' person reading this would be horrified, and a politician promising to get rid of welfare, would be soundly defeated. After all, isn't government supposed to care for those who are poor, sick, crippled, and to use a modern term, "disadvantaged?" I say NO. Let me examine America before Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who began the welfare state.
I won't get into all possibilities of an America without welfare, because a lengthy volume could be written and still not cover its horrendous results, but let me just mention a few. America had poor, middle, and wealthy classes before welfare, but those classes earned what they had, and there were no subsidies. Americans were responsible for their own conditions of health, food, residence, transportation, retirement, protection, and whatever life deals. Government was microscopic, and Washington D.C. was also. I was born and raised in D.C., so I know. I also grew up in my Dad's drug store, so I knew many doctors, and none of them had a staff filling endless paperwork for Medicare and Medicaid, because there was none. A doctors office visit was about $3. Gasoline was two silver dimes a gallon, and a Hershey bar was a nickel. My Dad bought a new Plymouth in 1940 for $660, and a 40 acre retirement farm with large home and two barns for $9500.
Before welfare, there was no payment for being unemployed. People had to work to live, and there were no illegals crossing the border from Mexico. It would have been pointless, as an illegal would have starved. America was for those legally admitted, regardless of their origins, and they became Americans and learned English. Slums were non existent, and the big cities were safe. No gun laws, cops could use theirs at will, and most Americans had one or many. Prices were stable, and graffiti was unknown. There were no nursing homes, because people died when they got terminally sick or old, and weren't kept alive endlessly and cruelly, for the sake of government hand outs to all concerned with keeping people alive who should have died.
Americans saved for their old age, and parents could leave their homes, farms, and businesses to their offspring with no taxes. There was no EPA, Homeland Security, or government messing around with education, transportation, housing, health, prices, race, or safety. There were no interstate highways, and hundreds of thousands of huge tractor trailers were not clogging highways. Things were shipped by rail, and air was clean and unpolluted. There were no freeways in big cities, and people shopped in downtowns. They got there in clean, electric streetcars, which were fed by neighborhood bus lines. Department stores delivered, and cities were healthy. Suburbs were farms, because welfare recipients had not flooded cities, driving out workers and families who built the suburbs to get away from the welfare recipient trash. Before welfare and inheritance taxes, many times, homes were passed down in families for generations. Neat row houses on tree lined streets with high ceilings, hardwood floors, porches, garages, and fireplaces by the millions, were America before welfare. Fine, crime free neighborhoods, were America. The phrase Dial One for English hadn't been invented, and Spanish radio stations didn't exist. No one saved in gold and silver for fear of an economic collapse, because the coins were made of gold and silver. Cars didn't have catalytic converters, and didn't have to be inspected for tailpipe emissions, because the air was clean, even in Los Angeles.
Single parent families were also unknown, as Dad worked to support his family, and Mom was a housewife, stayed home and cared for the kids, who turned out pretty good. There were no public housing 'projects' to ruin neighborhoods, nor other government programs which did the same. If you were out of work, you'd better find work or starve, because no checks would arrive from government. Workers who fled the cities to get away from welfare recipients and public housing, moved to newly created suburbia, with its necessary freeways. Workers had to spend countless hours in cars trying to get to work in bumper to bumper traffic jams on freeways which were supposed to make travel easy. Oil consumption grew and America had to import oil. The air over big cities became full of 'smog' from all the cars. The old fine neighborhoods were destroyed. Abandoned homes and cars, trash, and graffiti were everywhere. Crime and murder escalated, and it was dangerous to even travel in cities. Department stores moved to suburbia where their customers now lived, and marvelous big city stores, theatres, concert halls, and attractions were abandoned. All because of the welfare state, originated by FDR, and increased by Republicans and Democrats with every election. Politicians stayed up nights trying to think of new ways to give money away in the name of humanity, but of course to get votes.
The medical profession has been ruined by the welfare state. The transportation sector has been ruined by interstates with hundreds of thousands of huge trucks polluting the air. Cities were bypassed by the interstates, which cost millions of businesses to go bankrupt. Interstates are part of the welfare state, which have ruined railroads, cost jobs, polluted the air, and caused oil shortages. Don't mistake my opinion of interstates! Toll roads are fine. Pennsylvania built the Pennsylvania Turnpike before WW II, and it made a profit for the state. Other states and private investors did the same, and tolls paid for the roads and upkeep, and generally made truck traffic non existent on them. Interstate 80 made truck traffic profitable, and they abandoned the Pennsylvania Turnpike. If all the interstates were sold to entrepreneurs or states who made a profit and return on their investments, 80% of tractor trailers probably would cease to exist, and railroads once again haul freight other than coal and oil. The welfare state has caused millions of illegals to cross our borders from Mexico and other places to live free on welfare, and have babies who are automatically citizens. The welfare state has caused inflation, making both Mom and Dad having to work, and making 'latchkey' kids proliferate, or day care centers necessary, both of which have destroyed healthy family life. The welfare state has made bankruptcy, divorce, drugs use, delinquency, pollution, graffiti, and crime to become so common, that few even think about them any more. They have become part of our life.
Once welfare started, it was impossible to stop it from growing, because its recipients would always vote for politicians who promised to increase it. It has caused America to have a current deficit of close to $20 trillion , and long term, committed spending of maybe $200 trillion, a figure impossible to comprehend, other than paying with Monopoly Money, which is what the buck really is anyway. The future? I believe that if a Trump gets the White House and Tea Party libertarian-Republicans get majorities in the Senate and House, we might have a chance. Otherwise, its more and more debt, foreign wars, and continued decline of not only the USA, but other civilized, working, prosperous nations, who unfortunately, are not having enough offspring to even maintain their inventive, producing, intelligent, class who have brought prosperity to the civilized world.