If we can prevent the Government from wasting the labor of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy,” Thomas Jefferson said.
The last few decades in the US showed that the “we” Jefferson referred to were not successful achieving this goal.
Lyndon Johnson wanted to care for the poor. Yet, despite increased spending from negligible amounts in the early 1960s to about US$700 billion on just select programs now (not all, according to the Congressional Research Service Report about Federal Outlays for Selected Low-Income Assistance Programs), poverty rates did not change, hovering around 15%.
Then, the government wanted to take care of schooling and universities too. We know where this care ended up: 65% of black males do not graduate 6 years after starting college, white males do not do much better at 60%, and some 50% drop out of high schools earlier (for women the respective percentages are 43 and 35 percent). Such statistics suggest that taking care of education has not produced the expected results in these areas either.