It's the same thing, just a different scale. Helping individuals recover helps the state as a whole, just as helping a state recover helps the nation as a whole. Not the same thing at all. Helping one of the states of the nation helps every citizen in it. Giving money to an individual means that individual can spend it anywhere on anything. Giving money to individuals fosters laziness, unlike giving help to a state in the form of government services, kills motivation and direction.
A state is made up of millions of individuals, so individual attributes of dependence like lack of motivation, laziness, aimlessness and irresponsibility don't apply to a state as a political entity, unless most of the individuals are that way. Issuing dependence to individuals in a state is the way the state reflects those attributes, doing damage to all in the state that aren't like that.
"Helping one of the states of the nation helps every citizen in it. "It's still helping one group of people at the expense of another whether it's done on an individiual basis or not.
Giving money to an individual means that individual can spend it anywhere on anything. Giving money to individuals fosters laziness, unlike giving help to a state in the form of government services, kills motivation and direction.
This is the crux of your issue. You have a policy difference with the government. I dissagree with you. I think giving money to individuals is sometimes nothing more than a helping hand that gets them back on their feet and allows them to become productive instead of lanquishing and filing bankruptcy and causing ripple effects through the economy.
In some cases I agree that giving individual aid causes dependency and does not serve to be helpful as intended.
But how is this theft? If our duly elected representatives have the power to give to the states, don't they also have the power to give to individuals? Just because you disagree with the policy doesn't make it Theft.