Think of parasites like worms and ticks. If unchecked, they will ultimately kill the host by literally sucking the lifeblood out of it. Parasites may seem a cruel word to use with respect to our welfare system but it is what it is.
Sad to say, even good people can be destroyed once they enter the welfare system. In the recent economic downturn, I personally know people that lost their jobs that I used to consider honest, hard-working people. But the generous unemployment checks have, I'm sorry to say, corrupted them. One formerly good friend of mine has been out of work for nearly three years and I went over to see him and his wife a few months ago.
It was a sad sight to see. Their once tidy home has been reduced to shambles. Junk and overgrown weeds are in the yard. The home is a dark, dirty place with the shades drawn in the middle of the day with only the light of a couple of TV sets that appear to be perpetually kept on. Yes, they were big screens - recently purchased.
The house was well stocked with food but it was mostly junk. Half empty bags of chips and cookies appears to be everywhere on the filthy kitchen counter and living room coffee table. My friend and his wife basically lies around all day on the couches drinking beer and eating chips while watching TV while dirty dishes pile up in the sink.
It seems lying around the home fosters laziness. People that work 40-60 hrs a week (or more) at fulltime jobs can be seen on weekends running chores, doing yardwork, etc. Their homes and yards are usually kept immaculate. But give them nothing to do all day and everything else falls by the wayside. Now running the laundry and mowing the yard seems like a big hassle once you get used to lounging around all day watching television.
Idleness fosters laziness and it becomes a vicious cycle that utterly destroys the lives of people caught up in it.
The only way we can beat this vicious cycle is to end welfare. Discontinue the EBT cards and rewarding young girls for having babies out of wedlock. Limit unemployment to only a few weeks. Get the federal government and even the state government 100% out of the welfare business. Keep it at the local level.
Once the towns become responsible for any welfare programs, see how fast welfare fraud is eliminated. It's one thing to have people cheating a system that is based in Washington D.C. or in some far-flung state capital that could be hundreds of miles away. But when the town raises your property tax because some freeloaders three houses down from you are cheating the system - well, let's just say that there is nothing like a little peer pressure to get people off their lazy butts.
Time to go Galt and watch the whole thing implode.