When things get bad enough they have to turn around. The bad news is it has to get really really bad before most free loaders will quit the freeloading system.
GW Bush expanded the problem by giving more welfare in the tax code. First we need to get rid of the tax code as it is today. Get rid of the IRS.
But to make real reforms we need to go back to states electing senators not the people. I know this is a shock to some but this is why our states are getting creamed by the federal gov’t. The Senators were supposed to watch out for the states but when we started direct election of senators that all went bye bye. Direct Democracy isn’t necessarily a good thing. There’s a reason our founders put in the electoral college and had states choose the senators.
You know what? I think you are right. It is better. Why? Because the balance of power is gone, gone, gone...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
“Prior to the Constitution, a federal body was one where states effectively formed nothing more than permanent treaties, with citizens retaining their loyalty to their original state. However, under the Constitution, the states were subordinated to a central government; the election of senators by the states reassured Anti-federalists that there would be some protection against the swallowing up of states and their powers by the federal government, providing a check on the power of the federal government.”
“The Senate was part of a formal bicameralism, with the members of the Senate and House responsible to completely distinct constituencies; this helped defeat the problem of the federal government being subject to “special interests”.”
Now they can be bought by future president wannabees.