The balancing between legitimate interests, eg business and public, has to be done by something. Anything which did this would be called "government". You can't blame business for resisting, can't blame the public for wanting protection from blatant rapaciousness.

While not stated well, I did not mean such things as Workers Compensation drove the economy. What I meant was that they were affordable. And until, for instance, workers rights made industrial accidents very expensive, more expensive than employers wanted to afford, employers really didn't give much of a hoot. There's a great movie of the building of Hoover Dam. It makes a person shudder to see the disregard for safety. Once accidents were made expensive, Workers Compensation as a system came into being to lay off the losses, and safety became a real interest of the employers. It had to hit the bottom line.

I believe the reality of Social Security and the underclass is this. The underclass must be kept happy - if not, it would revolt, lawlessness would be much more rampant, more and more of the GNP would go into security, and so on. So, it is in the interest of the monied and propertied to see there is welfare and Social Security.

One could regard Social Security, for instance, as pre-payment for that which a smart society would be providing anyway, for their own protection. At least this way the folks who will get it are paying for some of it, no matter how little they earn (albeit in "legitimate" employment - not government work or drug dealing).

The problem with what some people call "snottiness" and others call satire is that it's so darned much fun!

Arf