Reply #158: I accept that there will inevitably be some free riders who won't get it together

[Hippo_Tron]

Because that is the case with more or less any social program you offer, some people will take advantage of the system. You have to make a value judgment as to whether or not it is worth kicking these people off and in the process kicking off people who actually need the help. I would rather not have a cutoff date and continue to support those who don't get it together because I can't stand the thought of kicking off people that actually need help.

Out of all of the things that waste taxpayer money, welfare free-riders account for a tiny tiny percentage yet they are the most talked about. In the grand scale of issues I see it as basically a non-issue. When we've dealt with the far larger wastes of taxpayer money like the defense budget then maybe we can talk about welfare. But I think that we as a nation need to drastically shift our priorities in terms of what we get outraged about the government wasting our money on.

I can't tell you how many times after Katrina I heard people complaining about lazy black people committed about $1 billion worth of FEMA fraud. Yet not one mention of how our President committed a $1 trillion fraud called the Iraq War. People need to get their fucking priorities straight and stop seeing the poor as the source of their woes, when the numbers clearly don't show that.