<Are there fewer destitute? Look back at the 1930s and tell me that those people were better off without the safety net.

I was talking the early 1960's, before many of the social programs we are discussing were in existence. That was the start date of the money numbers I was using.

Are more poor families intact today? You blame a complex phenomenon like divorce on welfare? OK, then, in that spirit: are we more aware of and less tolerant of domestic abuse, which "kept families together", than we were before? Granted, families were more cohesive economic units before that heightened awareness. People tend to stick together when some of them are afraid to leave the house.

I'm not talking divorce, I'm talking never married and turning out kids like hotcakes. Your assumption that the many intact families of the past were intact due to abuse of some kind is silly to say the least.

...Isn't it true that the cost of health insurance for all of us is driven up by the cost of caring for the uninsured and underinsured who show up at emergency rooms for acute problems that could have been treated more economically in a subsidized clinic? Or are you saying that it's better to leave people with no health insurance without care? Do you remember that tuberculosis (consumption) was epidemic in this country because of a large pool of infected, untreated poor wandering the streets? It could happen again.

Health care and insurance are expensive for a number of complex reasons involving the lack of market forces operating in the system. The whole story could fill a book. I personally don't think emergency care for the poor is that big a hit on the overall financial picture. I personally think using government resources to restrain and/or treat people carrying contagious lethal diseases around is a legitimate function of government, so we probably don't have an argument there.

...I would say that, just for starters, the elderly as a group (not just the well-off elderly) have a fighting chance to make ends meet thanks to government intervention into retirement. Before the government got into the act, some people worked their whole lives and had nothing in old age.

Yeah, but a trillion dollars a year for Social Security and Medicare? And the sociali...er...progressives are pushing for a brand new pharmaceutical entitlements. Just for a start. Where does this stop? When Social Security was founded, there were 16 workers for each retiree. Now there's about six, and dropping. This can't continue forever. I wouldn't mind the option of putting some of that money somewhere else for my retirement. The fact that this angers Democrats makes me suspect they are less worried about my comfortable retirement than they are about losing power over me.

Government-sponsored vaccination programs have reduced the rate of infectious disease dramatically. Student grant and loan programs have allowed thousands of promising young people to get a higher education and improve their lives.

This wasn't exactly the entitlement programs I was talking about. And student loan programs should theoretically pay for themselves. Many of them involve the government simply guaranteeing loans from private sources.