Welfare is a government program whereby taxes are collected from productive people under threat of imprisonment and after a considerable percentage of the haul is consumed by administration costs, pork spending and corruption, what is left over is gifted to unproductive people. This is called income redistribution and is one of the key points in the
Communist Manifesto.
The term was coined in Britain by the Labour Party after WWII who were intent on ousting Winston Churchill by calling for a "Welfare state, not a warfare state".
In the United States welfare first appeared in earnest as part of the New Deal.