I guess we'll find out in the next few decades how "affordable" it all was. Each of these ideas started out as a reasonable, well-meaning, and often minimal effort, and in following years each of them was expanded, added to, and saddled with massive bureacracies.

Social Security

Covers a lot more than the minimal safety net originally envisioned. Has become the primary retirement source for many people, something that was never intended. Currently responsible for about a quarter of the entire Federal budget, which I dare say would have shocked even FDR. Don't forget Medicare, which

workers compensation

This is eating California alive almost single-handedly. Small businesses are collapsing. Two of them that I deal with have had to lay off people to survive, and are trying to cover their needs with the remainder. Good news, at least for me, is that my mechanic now has to work weekends.

water and air quality standards

Rapidly expanded from reasonable requirements to avoid polluting the environment to the bizarre idea that anything that humans do to affect the environment, harmful or not, is a bad thing that needs to be reigned in or at least approved by the State. Talk to a farmer, a developer, or anyone that actually uses resources for anything at all.

higher mileage for automobiles

Most of this was accomplished by shaving weight off of cars, or making them smaller. Exercise for the student: find out how many lives have been lost from this. Without the loophole for trucks, which single-handedly created the SUV and minivan industry, all of us, including those with families and work to do with our cars, would have been forced into tiny rice-grinders.

minimum wage

Keeps a lot of new workers and lower-level workers out of jobs. Of course, you don't think entry-level jobs are "real" jobs anyway, and one can always hire illegals when legal American workers are overpriced.

and on and on and on.

On and on indeed. A survey of California's budget process, or the legislative agendas of some of our Democratic legislators, reveals a mass of brain farts that would collapse the state if all, or most of them actually became law. To a Democrat, there is nothing in existence that doesn't require at least some managing by the government. I never thought I'd live to see a black market in three-gallon toilets.

To the leftist, it doesn't matter if it works, what it costs, or what has to be balanced against it. What matters is only the good intentions.

In 1950, the average family of four paid 2% of its earnings to federal taxes. Today it pays 24%. You may think that has no impact at all, but it does. As just one example, when I was a kid, a family could live quite well on a blue-collar or one-parent income.

There is a hell of a lot of elbow room between totalitarian socialism and anarchy. I'd just like to see us moving the other way for a change.