Why was social welfare needed in the first place?
Because of the injustice with the hiring of minorities.
Families needed unions, healthcare, and equal pay in order to succeed.
And to level the playing field.
Ward Cleaver and his family were never turned away from a restaurant due to their skin color. Nor I doubt when obtaining a white color position in the business world.
If the white business world, back then as well as today, had played fair we would not have so much property within minority communities.
If anyone has this illusion that minorities are not treated differently when it comes to employment, housing, and basic treatment, think again.
Not much has changed.
And lately, things have been in regression.
When you are a minority of the wrong skin color, and greatly stereotyped as well, and you need to feed your family or house yourself and no employer will consider you for a decent job, selling drugs on the street corner becomes a plausible option. Probably the only option.
If conditions were different or had been different, sure, we probably would have no need for social welfare today or back during LBJ. But that is the perfect world. We never have lived in that perfect world.
And it looks like we will not for some time to come.
Just watch the national news on any given night to confirm that.