ABSTRACT
Welfare programs encourage individuals to become content in their position of dependency, and when others find themselves newly in a position to collect welfare, either out of laziness or out of bad luck, they too encounter the same incentives. The fastest-growing sectors of dependency on government assistance are health, welfare, and housing. The gradual expansion of government reach has thus led to a gradual expansion of dependency. An approach for explaining the growth of dependency in America is the shifting paradigm of negative and positive rights. The Civil War and its immediate aftermath were a turning point in American history. President Franklin D. Roosevelt turned the presidency into a seat of vast power, from which he was able to influence every aspect of American life. One of Roosevelt's greatest—and most controversial— governmental expansions was Social Security. In essence, Social Security was created as a pension system for all American workers.
