About 66% of the United States' annual federal budget of 4 trillion dollars goes towards social safety nets, and that doesn't count local and state budgets. Please note that the federal debt is currently 20.6 trillion dollars.

Why are people downvoting this? The US is 2nd in social protection spending (total as % of GDP) in the OECD it’s second to bloody France the only problem is that it seems to be much less efficient.

Well it also spends 3 times as much as the NHS on healthcare, and look at the results. It's inefficient as hell, yeah.

[citation needed]

I can't help but feel that your statement is highly misleading or possibly outright false. The US population is estimated around 323 million. That would make social safety net spending at an average of $8,173 per PERSON per year.

That's incredibly difficult to believe.

Breakdown from 2016: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/images/pubs...

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid consist of almost 50% of the federal budget. If you include "Other," which includes other welfare programs such as veterans benefits, federal food stamps, as well as "Non-defense," which includes additional veterans benefits/housing/health, you can see that a very large percentage of the federal budget is on social safety nets.

And again, that is only federal. The amount of money locally and statewide that is put into affordable housing, homeless shelters, planned parenthood, etc at the local level contributes to what amounts to a nontrivial amount spent on social safety nets.

The term "social safety net" or "welfare program" as applied to veterans' benefits doesn't seem appropriate for this discussion. After all, people who don't work for the military also have benefits, which are not considered welfare programs, so it's inconsistent to throw this category in.

Social Security and Medicare are not particularly redistributive, so I don't think it's appropriate to include them either. The terms "welfare" or "safety net" implies to me taking from the well off and helping a relatively small number who are in need.

As long as you apply the same rules to other countries you compare to, that's great.

But then, again, the US is going to look pretty good compared to others.

(and I would like to add that there are plenty of economists saying that in fact most or all of a country's military budget is a social welfare program, as it's a job-of-last-resort for young people, which definitely helps them)

The presence of lots spending on X is not the same as having lots of X. They may invest but there is ample evidence of a poor return.