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

[Shovel Ready]

There were plenty of poor and disadvantaged people under feudalism, mercantilism, socialism and every other social and economic system. What is different about all this in the US is that the supposedly poor people are fat. Explain that.

[brown9500v13]

Hee, hee, hee. Sure Doooood.

[dan]

Conservatives desire to get the 99% off social dependence and make the poor less than 1%. Your socialist masters desire the dependance of the nation... we desire its liberation and self-sufficiency. The conservative world view that most people can survive without government dependance is at odds with the fascistic or socialist world view that most people cannot.

[GOZ2FAST]

Your assumption that there must be poor for there to be uber rich is false on it's face...a country can have EVERYONE be successful assuming everyone has opportunity, hard work ethic and ability....the liberals love to have an underclass dependent on government because it keeps them in power...they teach people to be dependent. The poor will always be among us, because we enable them to remain poor...

CAPITALISM is not the culprit for poorness...laziness and being taught you can't do it on your own is.

There will always be poor people...conservatives believe in helping them to crawl out of their ditch...

[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.

[Calyx]

The system is too easily abused. I witness it everyday. i don't think it should be completely abolished but for god sakes people living in two story houses with multiple cars should not be able to get welfare because they found some loopholes (I have a family member who did this)

I help the poor any time I can, and when I say poor I mean the HOMELESS. the people so poor they don't even have a roof over their head. Ironically some of them have a better outlook on life than all these whiny brats who call themselves poor because they can't afford an iphone.

[Michael]

Best to consider the spiral of production/consumption/waste that supports capitalism. Like every other economic system envisioned since John Locke, it leads to the wall, the one we smash into at high velocity when the resources run out.

Welfare keeps the poor and disadvantages in the ranks of consumers instead of revolutionaries, and capitalism can never run out of consumers or else it dies. But like every other economic system, it cannot run out of resources or it dies. And we die with it.

So I would be looking at space exploration. We have made a ruin of this Earth, but there are other planets we can plunder. And starships are necessary as well unless we learn to develop a resource-based economy.

[Who Else?]

Nixon signed off on welfare increases because the Democratic Congress had a large enough majority to override his veto. Nixon actually signed more progressive legislation into law than any president after FDR, but only because he couldn't stop it.