“Without all that spending, people would either fail completely and die out, or get their act together. “
i think you’re missing a major point: these programs are jobs for worthless political hacks. these are useless individuals with idiotic credentials that suck at the government’s teats.
they have been, and will be a plague on any political system.
i could go on but, just visit some agency and request the services that they are supposed to provide.
Getting rid of the deadwood government employees would be half-accomplished if we eliminated all the safety-net programs where they ‘work’.
To get rid of the rest, just give government employees bonuses and raises for cutting costs within their departments — including by headcount reduction. I think we can safely count on their own larceny to cut headcount to the bare minimum using such a dog-eat-dog bonus plan, don’t you ?