Moralistic jingoism on autopilot, huh?
The people at the top who profit from most the welfare state simply misdirect your sense of wrongness onto the minor players, divert it away from themselves.
Inheritors of vast wealth don't necessarily do any more to provide for their own lifestyles than welfare recipients, but they're adored rather than vilified.
Loafers & freeloaders exist at every level, always have, always will. It's just another form of exploitation, with the preachers often being the biggest perps.
Their goal, of course, is to prevent you from seeing past the identity politics they offer, to have you work against your own interests by attacking the weakest among us.
Why does the welfare state exist? Because it profits the financial elite more than providing jobs & wages. When it starts to get too big, to threaten that order, they don't look at the beam in their own eye but rather the mote in the eyes of others, and encourage you to do the same.
If they really wanted to reduce the need for the welfare state, they'd pay better wages & hire more people, accept less short term profit in exchange for more long term from a healthier economy.
If they were really ready to "Believe in America", they wouldn't offshore their money as fast as possible, wouldn't seek to increase already vast & un-spendable fortunes for the only purpose of doing so.
If it weren't for the welfare state, we'd have recognized trickledown economics as a sham long ago, and changed it.
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