Indeed, you can view prescriptive or customary adoption of secondary and tertiary education (for one demographic) and the penal system (for another) as the stat

Indeed, you can view prescriptive or customary adoption of secondary and tertiary education (for one demographic) and the penal system (for another) as the state of the art social contract a la workfare. To all appearances, the US has been steadily drifting away from the welfare state model, so workfare seems like wishful thinking to me.