This is an interesting article about another unintended consequence of the welfare state.

In years past various blocks of our citizens would migrate from one corner of the country, where there was less prosperity, to areas offering more plentiful jobs. Certainly alien immigrants supplemented that flow of workers, but it wasn’t the only source of them. In fact, the great American West was built by such a migration `Go West Young Man“, and Manifest Destiny. As the eastern states found themselves upon hard times and waning opportunity, millions streamed West to settle the region and seek their individual fortunes.

In another case, in the early 1900’s, many thousands of the South’s black population streamed northward from the unfriendly atmosphere of a Jim Crow world to seek jobs in the industrialized Northern sections of the country. These mass migrations have happened repeatedly in America’s past and helps account for our great prosperity.

But all that was before welfare and the nanny state were foisted upon a gullible nation. Now, instead of moving West from metropolitan areas such as New York, Detroit and Chicago, many millions of America’s potential workers stay in their poverty ridden status because they have become convinced that their welfare checks in those cities are their only lifelines and any thought of uprooting themselves from their mentally comforting illusion that they are being “taken care of” has become anathema to them.