No one had the spine to talk about it because it was immediately retorted with "YOU'RE GONNA TAKE AWAY THEIR LIVELIHOOD".

Trump is already doing it. Step 1: Bring back well-paying manufacturing jobs. Step 2: Economic Opportunity Zones. Step 3: Reduce black unemployment. Step 4: Gradually reduce welfare benefits. Step 5: Repeat steps 1-4 as necessary. Step 6: ???? Step 7: Profit!

We are a country of more jobs than people. That's why we steadily have more than a million immigrants coming in every year. That's more than enough jobs for the people on welfare to get off. Although, 0% unemployment is functionally impossible. Cutting them off cold turkey is the answer. Not slowly, but immediately.

I'd say its gotten better though, it was a lot worse in the 80's and 90's. BUT there's also more entitlements than ever, so you could say it hasn't gotten better because there's definitely more people overall on welfare of some sort.

It's a problem that solves itself once you cut it off cold turkey. If they don't work, they're broke. Maybe they turn to illegal activities to make money, but that's beside the point. Employers that may not pay a livable wage, will have no choice but to pay a livable wage. Right now, employers get away with not paying a livable wage, because the taxpayers subsidizing their workers with welfare, allows them to pay less. So cutting off welfare will be hard at first, but it will have economic boosting benefits. More money in taxpayer pockets, more money in previous welfare recipients pockets (if they choose to not be broke).

So how do you cut them off cold turkey? Make VERY strict requirements to be eligible. Preferably it'd be nice to cut it off completely and remove things like the foodstamp system altogether, because there will always be people who are happy to not work and collect what little they can, even if it's not enough to live off of. The truth is, people will make due with even a very small amount of entitlements, because if they don't have to do anything for it, it's free money in their pockets either way. We will always have people like that. There's homeless people with food stamp cards, but they're not homeless for any reason other than they don't care to do anything to not be homeless. For them, homelessness is a choice.

But the ultimate solution, is to simply remove ALL welfare, and only cover the disabled. Again, it would be painful at first, but there would soon be sweeping changes in the economy for the better of everyone. Employers can't hire people if they can't put food on the table. No workers = No business. When it comes to the choice of less profit or no profit, which do you think businesses would choose? Obviously, less profit.

Remove the social security system, and the same thing will happen. If people can't make enough money to save for retirement, companies will be forced to pay more. If after that they squander it and don't save? That's on them. No bailouts.

One also has to think of the effects on supply and demand. Right now, millions upon millions of people, are buying up tons of food with foodstamps. Think about how that affects the cost of things when it comes to supply and demand. It makes things cost more, because more demand, less supply. And what's worse, is its technically demand not based on production. It's "free" money given to people that didn't contribute to the economy to get that money. It's essentially the same as printing money, and with the +20 trillion of debt, ALL government money is technically printed money....worse even, because it's all debt money with interest attached to it.

See, the truth about welfare is entitlements are used to buy votes. That's its only purpose. Yes, people can fall on hard times, but if you live in a world where people have no safety net, guess what happens? Changes. Job security increases. Personal responsibility increases. Pay increases. Prices decrease. Because the people will demand it collectively, and there will be no way they can be ignored, and no way that companies can save face. No one to offset their employee's pay.

Before the welfare system was enacted, people lived exactly like this, and it worked just fine. It was only when the great depression happened that problems came. And maybe a welfare system can help boost things when events like that happen, but a welfare system doesn't and shouldn't be perpetually active. It should only be activated in times of economic depression, if necessary.

There's also a lot of other things that can be done to shore up things for having no welfare systems. For example, limiting exports. One of the main reasons for some products pricing, is that Americans have to compete with overseas sales (such as with groceries), which drives up prices. American beef and milk for example. Look what happened when Canada banned US milk sales in their country. Milk went from $4-5 a gallon to $1.25 a gallon. Why? Because the dairy industry had more milk than they knew what to do with. They may have been profiting less, but they were still profiting. Some things, companies make more money selling overseas than locally.

So they have every interest to sell overseas, which decreases supply in the US, which increases price in the US. So we actually end up paying more for products in the US as citizens, for companies selling those products overseas. At that point, we are practically paying for the "privilege" to provide exports of our goods to other countries, almost like welfare. And those countries may levy heavy taxes (like China) and put money into their own coffers by siphoning wealth from the sale of our products. Even in cases where we sell products to other countries for less money than we pay, that hurts us even more, because it's again reducing supply, which increases prices of those products for US citizens.

So if we limit what products are allowed to be exported, we would both increase supply and reduce price. We need to have businesses revolving around essentials (like food) operating in a capacity where they have almost too much supply. This doesn't necessarily need to be perpetual, but in time of extreme economic downturn, it would be a measure that could drastically stretch peoples dollar.