Today the welfare state is omnipresent in every part of the United States. The federal budget is dominated by entitlement spending, with 45 percent of federal spending in 2012 going to Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare (among other health care entitlements). Simultaneously, the states are struggling under the fiscal burdens imposed on them by mandatory entitlement programs: spending by the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (primarily on Medicaid) has averaged $1.21 billion over the last three budget years. Yet the federal appetite for entitlement spending is far from sated – consider Obamacare – and if history is any guide, we can expect more entitlement programs in the future.
The historical increase in spending has of course been accompanied by a rising portion of Americans who use these entitlement benefits; the Wall Street Journal reported that as of early 2011, 49.1 percent of the population lived in a household where at least one member received government benefits, up from 44.4 percent in late 2008. Further, the size of these programs perpetuates a cycle of dependency as the total benefits package of the average welfare family is actually larger than the average salary of jobs that pay higher than the minimum wage.
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