You constantly say this, but it is hardly a chicken or the egg scenario. Like HappySquirrel HappySqurriel points out, it was only when the government set out to help the poor single mothers who were the exception that single motherhood began to really explode (and among blacks, it is now the rule). It was entirely predictable as if you subsidize something, you'll always get more of it. People who have had their irresponsible lifestyles enabled by the government will never change if they don't have to, so if we do what you propose and wait for people to take responsibility on their own before we start scaling back the social safety net, we will be waiting for eternity (or until bankruptcy at any rate) because it is simply never going to happen.

One could say, "well the government makes it so".  But in a Democratic state, that elects representatives who end up trying to address the wishes of their constituents, the society will get the type of government reflective of who they are.  If say America were invaded by aliens who implemented a police state and then forcefully brainwashed everyone, then there would a strong argument for saying that EVERYTHING wrong in society is due to government.  But in society now, people do take responsibility and do get ahead and so on.  People also fail.  It isn't all the government and merely removing government will somehow magically make problems go away.  There is nothing magically about freedom and lack of government that makes society a utopia.  What a society does with the freedom is what makes the difference.  This being said, the relationship between a society and its government can produce a nasty feedback loop where the system goes into a spiral and things get worse.  Only if people manage to work to break out of this, and depower government, will it ever change.  But the change has to start on the bottom.  And the citizens have to go to work to eliminate problems.  A society, for example, that says it is generous because it pays for welfare collectively (aka Scrooge's statement), isn't going to be counted as generous. 

Other factors, given the excesses of society, can also lead to things going off track.  I had, for example, just finished this book below.  It goes into how markets can end up making people immature also:

http://www.amazon.com/Consumed-Markets-Children-Infantilize-Citizens/dp/0393049612

I will also add here that a society with irresponsible citizens who don't address their issues voluntarily demanding freedom, and if they don't manage it once they get it, they have problems.  Societies that get dictators generally get them, because they fail to manage their own problems peacefully.  Nations that go from civil wars to dictatorships have this happen.

I agree, many people say its unfair that the people of Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain and others have to face social spending cuts due to austerity measures, and they say the banks are all to blame.

The reality is all of these countries are far less competitive then the Northern Euro Countries, however they still had top notch social services.

You see, Scandinavian countries have great social services because they have a strong economy to support it.

The PIGS countries do not, so they have been living well beyond their means for many years and deficits piled up. Add on the financial crisis, a problem became into a crisis and now radical measures are being taken.

You see people say the want GOVT to stop spending but get angry when it stops social programs.

Just a side note, I've applied to over 10 jobs this past month that I was solidly qualified for, with 10 years experience in the given field, not even ONE interview.

Its a sad state of affairs when I have more viable income options in the music field than in the technology field.

How are the banks to blame? Did the banks hold a gun to the Greek Government's head and force them to take out loans to support ridiculous and unsustainable entitlement programs?

Economies are ecosystems of a sort.  When things go well, then you can do more which can make things better.  When they snowball the other way, there are more problems, which results in people usually going to the government to fix.  End result can end up with a spiral of collapse where, as problems pile up, there is more government involvement, which then ends up causing more problems, and the entire system then collapses.  We are close to this now.  While people shouldn't panic, people shouldn't either operate under the presumptions this is normal and going to iron itself out, if you just wait it.  Why I have been saying what I have is that the citizens, despite their current situation of taxation and so on, are going to have to act constructively to solve problems.  There is no magic here.  People to take a swig of -isms, that somehow, an ideology, government, unguided markets, etc... will end up suddenly produce a utopia and they don't have to do anything but pay their taxes and be totally absorbed in their own self-interests.

It's interesting to watch the same media that freaked out over the Tea Party and gratuitously painted them at every turn as being rife with "extremists" now characterizing Occupy Oakland as having been "peaceful" right up until last night's orgy of violence.

And by "interesting" I, of course, mean "nauseating".

Well i've read a few rogue reports about violence before then...

but it is pretty interesting how a larger, peaceful movement with more members is generally branded as extremists and racists, while the OWS which has had ACTUAL bouts of violence and anti-semitism isn't labeled as either.

It certaintly blows a whole in the "No Leftwing media bias" claims a lot of people tend to make.

I mean, I've seen a few, too, but they mostly drew a bunch of false lines of equivalence between the protesters (who actually initiated the violence) and the police (who responded to it). It's just striking to see how the two AP reports, both of which are pretty representative of the kind of coverage AP has given the Tea Party and OWS, read next to one another: the reporter jumping at the shadows of possible extremists vs. the reporter pretending all this shit is unprecedented within the Occupy movement.

Then again, it's quite old hat. The anti-war movement also had a ton of extreme language, violent imagery, antisemitism, etc., but the media made sure that whatever it reported was completely sanitized for public consumption. I guess it's attributable to the fact that journalists are overwhelmingly leftists themselves, so these protesters mean well, and anything they do that is violent or over the line is just an aberration and not at all representative of the movement as a whole. Meanwhile something like the Tea Party is inherently dangerous, and the fact that you have to dig (and dig, and dig, and dig) to come up with a shred of extremism... well, that just shows how insidious it all is. Because rednecks are as clever as they are retarded and evil, as everyone knows.