Very few countries can still afford it. Another has to do with the moral consequences of government sponsored compassion. Neither the political right nor the left have neat formulas to solve the welfare problem. An obvious attempted solution is to privatize social services, or to establish more of a relationship with private providers of human services, which is happening all across the world. Among those who work in this area, there is an understandable fear of lessening government participation in the provision of social services.
Most people go into human services to help human beings in trouble.
One of the major frustrations of people in this field is that as human services become increasingly bureaucratized, their work shifts from dealing with human beings in trouble to filling out forms in triplicate for a government office with which they have very abstract relations. The liberation of human service providers from the daily burdens of bureaucracy is a worthy goal. The public financing of private human service agencies is now the most important strategy for attacking social problems in America. Massachusetts is a leader of the pack. According to a report from Governor Weld's office, this sprawling bureaucracy was not designed, it just happened.