Most of our government programs are screwed up because they suffer from "over-fitting". Just like in statistics you can some up with a higher order polynomial t

Most of our government programs are screwed up because they suffer from "over-fitting". Just like in statistics you can some up with a higher order polynomial that fits all your known data points but in practice it is going to be horribly broken if it is to be used to understand the nature of the curve. The fact is: 1. We cant prevent all plane hijackings and incidents. 2. We cant prevent a lone wolf attack for whatever reason. 3. We cant help all people in all their difficulties 4. We can not come up with a government program or many programs that will help all needy 5. We can not prevent all frauds Coming up rules like checking people shoes in TSA lines because of a past data point is overfiting. The best way would be to come up with a very uniform welfare program that includes everyone without a racial, gender,handicap and any other bias. Encourage private charity to help people get through exceptional situations. Another problem with separate welfare programs is the massive wastage in overhead + the total lack of empathy among the people who actually run it. Encouraging private charity would solve that problem to a very large extent, a church group often achieves more with less money. Not to mention when there is more money in private charity companies like Watsi can come up which will bring in more innovative ways to help people. Currently federal government's welfare money will not promote innovation.