Why do both libertarians & conservatives accept the liberal reasons for social welfare?

[Unluckyrecess437]

I think you're largely correct. In Europe and America, the welfare state was created in the 1930s and 1940s to make capitalism sustainable and to make the working class less likely to resort to revolutionary socialism. Social welfare is not socialism; it is an attempt to inoculate capitalist societies against the danger of socialism!

Since the 1980s, however, there has been a dramatic shift in the economies of western nations. Prior to this, the aim was to have full employment and a bare minimum living on welfare. Since the revolution of Thatcherism in Britain and Reaganomics in the US, however, supply-side economics has shifted the focus towards controlling inflation and maintaining prices. Doing so requires a certain level of unemployment. High unemployment is good for a supply-side economy, because it means wages can be held down and prices held stable. The result has been a ballooning of the welfare state, as market capitalism creates its own disenfranchised underclass.

I could say something now about the internal contradictions of the capitalist mode of production,but I think you can see where this is heading.