I agree with you. I was pointing out that some people's standard of living was improved by a redistribution effect. Do I agree with doing this? Only in a very small number of case where a person truly cannot provide for themselves because of a real disability. But general, no I do not. Because the redistribution effect has more cost in the aggregate than does the total benefit achieved.
Now, we were discussing the ambiguousness of the data and graph. Do you still wish to argue about the data as you wanted to previously or are you conceding my point and are now moving on?
Yes the welfare class obviously has a lot of purchasing power --- but it tends to waste money. For example --- if standard of living is measured by the number of televisions one owns, or how much spending is taking place --- retail activity or whatever --- then it can be a false illusion of wealth. A typical welfare family with no earning potential easily can have cable tv, the best DVD, a color television in every room, a late model care, cell phones and new clothes ---- a working family might have one television, no cell phones at all, no cable television, a used older car but instead have a savings account, a retirement account, some other investments. To give the welfare family the ability to spend and look prosperous, the government has to confiscate the money from a family which might have put it to far better use.
It's difficult to measure wealth --- but measuring it by consumer spending wouldn't be a good way -- it would be better to measure how many are living in the black, who require no government programs of any kind, and who have built a nestegg of some kind.