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Comment by s1artibartfast | Hacker News Reader

im counting everything. If the question is "what do we get for 4.5 trillion in taxes, and 6 trillion is spending", the answer is largely "welfare programs".

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Isn’t anything a government does ostensibly classified as working to improve collective welfare? That’s the basis of the social contract.

"welfare" [1] is generally a distinct concept from "public goods" [2]

Welfare is typically ment to mean policies to alleviate the hardships of poverty. These can be wealth transfers or socialized insurance policies to reduce the variability of outcomes.

Public goods are services like roads, courts, or firemen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)

In that case, neither Social Security and Medicare are welfare. Social Security is given to everyone regardless of income; so is Medicare.

Both are tools where the point is to prevent poverty.

Compulsory and universal participation are the methods used to achieve this goal.

It's also one of the largest revenues, and in most countries non-means tested, self funded programs wouldn't be considered welfare. It's been this was since the 30s and only recently have the terms been spun in the US as some wonky wHoA SaY-NO-To-CoMmUniSm!

I'm not really interested in debating different definitions. The point stands that the discretionary budget for building and maintaining public infrastructure is a small part of government, with the vast majority going to alleviating the hardships of poverty.

Your point is senselessly blunt without context, doubly so with incorrect context.

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