I don't think it's a natural social cycle, it's the outgrowth of the general mistrust of government that has festered over the last 30-40 years or so. I don't think that our political institutions have dealt with the changes in the media well.
The ideology that inspired the construction of these safety nets is gone for the most part -- we've degraded to bread and circuses. The political machinery on one side focuses on handing out stuff in exchange for votes, and the other side focuses on vilifying "those people". Nobody believes in anything anymore.
Organizations like the FDA and EPA were created in response to very real failings. The problem for many of us who grow up benefitting from these safety nets is that we don't have a sense of how hard-won these battles were. Life is good and so we start chipping away at the "nanny state" to get a tiny little bit more freedom. Actually more like a lack of inconvenience, not really freedom.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Is this just a natural social cycle?