Sure, but that's not the primary reason it's better for economic growth. A far larger proportion of social program beneficiaries would survive in an alternate t

Sure, but that's not the primary reason it's better for economic growth. A far larger proportion of social program beneficiaries would survive in an alternate timeline where these programs never existed. As for charity cases, there are vast private social support networks that emerge in a society with lower taxes and less government-funded social safety nets. It's not a perfect system with no one falling through the cracks, but it is a system more resilient to systemic collapse as seen in the USSR when it went bankrupt, and one that produces greater economic/social development overall. The zero-risk bias means people prefer to bring one type of risk to zero, even if it means increasing overall risk. I believe that is what's at work with government-provisioned social safety nets. Economic growth reduces a host of risks. But a social safety brings one type of risk - that is actually quite insignificant relative to the rest - to zero. So people are willing to trade economic growth for unconditional social safety nets.