Not going to happen. For this to work, as a people we would have to quite literally be willing to watch women and children die in the streets. If a government willing to do this were to come to power, the American people would quickly provide the rough equivalent of today’s welfare by private charity. That government would also be voted out at the next election.
And I doubt even many conservatives would be willing to carry this logic, and it is logical, to the extreme necessary to make it work. And that’s a damn good thing, IMO.
We’re only a little ways past Christmas, and here you’re approvingly paraphrasing Scrooge, “If they would rather die,’ said Scrooge, `they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Not necessarily.
Let's say we just passed legislation which said that
(A) if a current recipient of means-tested assistance has an additional child, that the benefits level would not be increased as a result, and
(B) Medicaid would provide free long-term birth control (IUD, Norplant, etc) and free sterilization to any Medicaid recipient.
Changing the rules so that there is no benefit to be gained by having a child on welfare IS NOT the same as making people die on the streets.