“What are the underlying causes of our current social problems?”
In a word, AFFLUENZA.
When people’s physical needs are easily met then the next level of ephemeral needs start surfacing such as satisfying urges, even delusional ones like a man wanting to be a woman or a man wanting to marry a man, that at a time when one struggles to feed or house oneself, one would not pay attention to.
In a generous welfare state one has time to indulge in those delusions. More importantly many lose an appreciation for the old set of set values that produced that abundance. In fact they end up despising them because those old values go against his new lifestyle and desires. So they set out to destroy them and replace them with new, untested, unproven ones that eventually lead to the collapse of society and a return to physical suffering and then the old, time proven values once again will reign supreme.
Kipling put this societal cycle in poetic form in his “Gods of the Copybook Headings”
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm
Good point.