AA
I largely agree with you - by spending eye watering amounts of money on social security, not only have we created a culture of dependency and expectancy but we've also abdicated our human responsibilities towards one another and our society at large. The anonymous 'they' now bear the responsibility of everything from keeping the streets clean, to what happens if I'm unemployed; theoretically, if everyone between the age of 16 and say 50, gave up one day a month to social service and security, then that's probably around 360 million working days a year that could go towards society... it's just an elementary point about how everyone uses the welfare state and big government as an excuse to abdicate their personal responsibilities towards society, but that's an awful lot of tax revenue that could be saved by everybody chipping in! As a parting shot on the subject, how many staunch left wing supporters see a homeless guy and think "I should do something about that" - the answer is probably very, very few...the default reaction is likely to be "the government should do something about that" i.e. the anonymous 'they' should take care of it and remove money from the economy in the process!
As for healthcare, it's a little more difficult, but the same problems of unaccountability towards over-consumption exist.
Regards,
the Bastard