I think this is a good, probing comment, and I would invite you to consider one more factor, because it's a major one: government debt and unfunded liabilities. This amounts to trillions in the U.S., a number so large it defies comprehension. A common solution offered is to simply "tax more", but it's clear that gov spending, by and large, bonkers. I'm sure the reasons for this are the same ones that keep that fat-cats plump, but the big-picture IMO is solving the looming debt-crisis; without that, solving the issues you raised could be for naught.
(edit: removed precise amount of US debt because figure is debatable and I don't want to get caught in weeds. It's a $BIG_NUMBER.
National debt is a looming crisis, but the largest impact on the general public has been irrationally cutting government spending in the wrong areas (cutting $M from social programs to spend $B/$T on foreign wars).
Of course, the general public is screwed when the crisis hits - we don't have any off-shore bank accounts - and this administration has seriously shortened the timeline to crisis.
If we give the government the ability to appropriate funds for social programs and safety-nets, rather than merely enforcing the rights in the constitution, it is inevitable that these funds will inevitably be misappropriated and allocated in ways that benefit the politician and his buddies, primarily.
As we continue on, we discover that, lo and behold, the programs need even more money, time for a tax increase!
Further down the line, we discover that further tax-increases are not politically-viable... no problem, let's just add to the entitlement-burden and let's re-visit the issue.
Later still, it's time to start paying for those unfunded liabilities but, damn it, there's no money in the vault. No problem: let's just print more money, and while we're at it, let's loan it to ourselves and charge "ourselves" interest (the second "ourselves" of course means "taxpayers, LMAFO).
Repeat until your currency, economy, and society collapses.
Other nations have no problem funding social programs, because they maintain a reasonable tax rate for high-income/high-wealth entities and avoid expensive indefinite foreign wars.
Keep in mind that a lot, if not all, of those countries exist under the umbrella of protection that the United States military provides, and thus do not have the same budgetary requirements for their own forces. Otherwise, time to start learning how to say "Please don't shoot" in Russian.
(edit: don't take the above as the complete-picture, by any means, it's just another rarely-mentioned factor that I wanted to bring up. I believe there's a sweet-spot to be found for taxation & social-programs that has a net-gain for society.)
(edit: removed precise amount of US debt because figure is debatable and I don't want to get caught in weeds. It's a $BIG_NUMBER.