“If the USA ever really had a social “safety net” it was not welfare or unemployment insurance. No, the safety net was being able to pick shift work at the local manufacturing plant when times got tough or little Timmy needed braces.”
Very interesting post.
That is the economic system; the culture, that made the US the powerhouse it once was. Everyone pulled their own weight - but there was the means to pull your own weight if/when you needed to.
Hard to explain, but putting it the way you did makes it easier to realize what a disaster so-called ‘transfer payments’ (welfare/UI) actually was.
In the beginning it might have been ‘okay’, but it is all so out of control now.
I put it that way because of the damage off shoring creates. The welfare is the secondary infection. The horse is out of the barn and as such what good is cutting welfare now if the local economic engine, the local hometown factory, is boarded up?