Why dosen't the US have better welfare?

A lot of physically disabled people are out on the street for the same reason that the mentally disabled are: They just don't want to live in an institution.

A lot of countries are nice and it was rude of me to insist that they're not. But still I get really tired of hearing how great life is in the socialist worker's paradises of northern Europe. Perhaps there are people who are temperamentally suited for a life without challenges, but most of us are not. I understand the rates of alcholism and suicide are very high there so apparently not everyone thinks it's a paradise.

Short answer? Yes, it's free. It really is free up through high school (12 grades) unless you want to send your kid to a private (non-government) school to become a music prodigy or just not have to hang out with the riffraff. Public (government run) universities are not as free as they used to be. You can pay several thousand dollars a year to attend one, although much of that is in the exorbitant price of books that change every year so it's hard to buy and sell them used. But in comparison to our cost-of-living statistics, a university education in America is a real bargain. You can easily put a kid all the way through college to a baccalaureate degree for the price of a very cheap car. For the price of the average house you can get him a PhD at Harvard and maybe even bribe the admissions committee to let him in.