Comment by ben_w

That may be the perception, but it's still not how it happened.

All of the currently-rich nations had a multi-generational baby boom*, long enough for their systems to assume and become dependent on that population growth.

* babies being the most extreme example of "influx of illiterate people, totally dependent on government handouts", though people only objected to them in the UK when I was a kid when it was single mothers producing them

Families started to have fewer kids, but the systems still presumed and needed more people to avoid stagnation. Japan chose stagnation instead of welcoming as many immigrants as it needed, and "the lost decade" became a plural: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades

> Healthcare and insurance, literally everything is pricing the middle class out of existence.

I assume from this that you're American? That's basically just America that has this problem. Healthcare and health insurance is fine in most other developed (and developing) nations, even e.g. here in Germany in those few years where it took on around a million asylum seekers.

• https://ourworldindata.org/us-life-expectancy-low

• https://ourworldindata.org/financing-healthcare