Melanie Phillips, the conservative (and former liberal) English writer comments on what is wrong with Welfare socila programs, which apparently don't work any better in England than they do in the USA:

The subject of welfare goes right to the heart of both our broken society and our broken politics. Poverty - not just the financial sort, but moral, spiritual and intellectual poverty too - will never be addressed by pulling the strings of our welfare state this way or that.

This is because the core assumption of the welfare state itself, that individuals are not responsible for themselves or their families and that the state should provide for them instead, is what perpetuates poverty… It also sets the stage for public disaffection with politics, since the state can never satisfy such unlimited demand and therefore is always seen to fail.

The poverty afflicting our society can properly be tackled only by restoring individual responsibility. This can be done, for example, by supporting marriage; by freeing up school choice and removing the dead hand of educationists from teacher training and the curriculum; and by replacing Treasury-controlled benefits and health and social care provision with personal and social insurance schemes.