Handouts, it is claimed, promotes lazy dependency on the part of "those people." Why would they work if they get free phones and big dole checks can can sit about on their butts while we hard-working working folk slave away on our behalf. If only we trimmed back those programs to a bare nothing, and throw on some stringent work-or-else incentives, then everyone would find work and the moral character of the nation would be improved.
The problem is, the facts don't support the idea that welfare promotes laziness. Are there folk who "exploit" the system? Sure. But they are seriously in the minority. Analysis of the facts indicates that making welfare stingier and more difficult to get doesn't actually cause people to go back to work.
But it seems unlikely that the facts will cancel the "common sense" that folk who want to cut the programs rely on. That further trimming social safety nets is done by reducing taxes that impact the wealthiest has, of course, no part of the equation.
As Galbraith noted as far back as 1963 (http://goo.gl/iMJso3): "The modern conservative is not even especially modern. He is engaged, on the contrary, in one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor – The New York Times
Studies rebut a long-cherished belief in America, on the right and left, that welfare encourages bad behavior by the poor.
Yeppers, that is the whole point Conservatism.
But it sounds good: reverse socialism, that is: giving to those that truly deserve it. Which, of course is No one.
Or there is this classic.
http://youtu.be/yTwpBLzxe4U
+keith olszewski Except the "Makers" (vs the "Takers").
+Dave Hill that's it. They deserve it…… They'll tell you that.
+keith olszewski That's because they're hard workers who have hit a patch of bad luck, not all those other lazy slackers who aren't taking responsibility for their own mistakes!