Diuretic
Permanently confused
Not sure what a welfare state means to you but I do know that poverty rates have fallen in the US from roughly 22% in 1959 to 12.7% in 1998. Somewhere in that time period -- the sixties, I believe -- there was a big push to end poverty in America by the Democrats, Bobby Kennedy comes to mind, and I think that is when they started giving aid to families that were under a certain income level.
It was even worse during the depression, something like 40% of Americans were living in poverty.
Not sure what Allie is talking about, how it was better before.
Got it, thanks for that information. I do know that Germany introduced the welfare state under Bismarck (not out of charity but for a sort of insurance for the ruling classes I think) and in the UK it didn't appear until the Attlee Labour government after WWII and in Australia it didn't appear until about the same time or a bit later perhaps.
I do know that I think it's better for a society to have a government-administered welfare state than to rely on private charity. Not that I'm proposing that private charity stops, I mean, the more the merrier, but that a government-adminstered system is constant and consistent and not subject to whim.