The two biggest domestic programs provide middle class welfare: Social Security and Medicare.

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The biggest recipients of welfare are the middle class.

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For one thing, people are much more willing to cut services for the poor rather than take on entitlements for the middle class, defense spending, or corporate welfare and subsidies.

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The progressive fantasy, shared by most American voters, is that a modern welfare state with expansive middle-class benefits can be sustained.

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Most American intellectuals and U.S. politicians are hoping Americans will get used to permanently-higher government spending as a share of GDP, and eventually, higher tax burdens, if even on the middle class (as exist in the dysfunctional European welfare states).

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The Democrats have turned themselves into the party of suburban complacency, against welfare handouts but in favour of middle-class safety nets.

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Most former welfare mothers are not leaping from handouts to the middle class.

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While Obamacare includes new health insurance welfare to help pay that cost, the net that working and middle class taxpayers would have to pay is still like a new payroll tax or income tax.

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Despite the recovery, the middle class are fearful for their future, especially after the 2005 labour-market reforms cut welfare benefits.

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