To all the people who believe that everyone on public assistance is stupid and/or lazy, do you guys think that our economy supports full employment, either now or at any time? Will removing government assistance actually increase net employment? If so, how?
It seems obvious that the economy supports fewer jobs than the total number of people who are theoretically capable of working. Accordingly, there are going to be x number of unemployed people, some short term and others long term. So "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" is nonsense. The best you can do is displace someone else who already has a job. Pulling public assistance is not going to make people more self-reliant, and even if it did, they'd be self-reliance and unemployed at the same time.
If you have an economy that won't supply jobs for everyone, you can either let them and their kids starve or not. That's pretty much what it comes down to. Or you can find a way to supply jobs for everyone, in which case everyone who doesn't take a job is either lazy or disabled, and you can then justify at least cutting the lazy ones loose.
- wolf