The population has grown. Obviously spending increases. However, access to the safety net has decreased as have the net benefits. In other news water is wet.

I used to believe this but it turns out that net benefits (by almost any measure) have increased continually:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-16/the-u-...

The fact that so many people don't "feel" more secure from these very expensive investments may point to other structural problems.

Huh.. thanks for the clarification. I should have googled first!

Or maybe the social security net was always atrocious, now it’s just a little bit less so.

(Not saying that’s necessarily the case, just that it could be)

The US has a larger social spending budget than Canada.

So if the US is “less horrendous”, then canada’s must be even worse?

The US population annual growth has barely broken 1% in the last 50 years. Social spending has increased at a greater rate.