FHN - as I'm an ex-Mormon you have to admit that was a pretty silly way to attack my argument.
If you give people benefits you do two things, you provide for them immediately and you deprive them tomorrow. We are efficient creatures. If we exercise we gain muscle. If we stop exercising our body eliminates that muscle. If you supply a need you replace the desire to alleviate the need and replace it with a servile depency. Now individuals react differently of course, having benefits doesn't make everyone weaker and less capable ( a small % will be motivated by pride to try even harder) but we are talking general effects. When I was a missionary I saw it first hand. I went into homes where welfare payments enabled functioning adults to cease working and live a life of dependant despair with no need to take any responsibility, these people invariably spent money on short term products like alcohol and neglected their homes and appearance. I also went into homes where people lived on even less money but had jobs and the difference was like night and day, humble homes but maintained, cheap clothing but washed and ironed. There is something about the human psyche that needs self respect and sufficiency.
We even see it in large scale program's like feeding Africa. The worst thing you can do to African farmers is hand out free food. In the US the worst thing you can do for workers is hand out free money to those not working. My next door neighbour gets benefits and doesn't need to work based on his utter play acting for a groin injury he sustained while having a vasectomy. He was earning money on the side as a window cleaner / odd jobs man until he started to get edgy about getting his benefits stopped. I asked him why he didn't retrain to get an office job.
'naw it would drive me bonkers.'
I asked his perfectly capable wife why she didn't get a job.
'why should I work for 40 odd hours and get paid less than the benefits we're on? We'd lose more than we get.'
Meanwhile They get a new car every three years, the house paid for, free school meals, trips and he can take his kids canoeing and fishing all year round since he isn't required to provide for his family. F*cking stupid and disgraceful system.
Charity is a bad, bad system and it destroys people long term. Wealth redistribution is not the state's job nor is it ever a long term beneficial behaviour. When you look at huge companies like GM and their history of bankruptcy it comes down to a very simple concept. It's not normally the market that kills them. It's the pension fund. When the number of dependents takes more from the pot than the providers can put in there is only one place that organisation is going. The US is bleeding out right now ( as is Europe) and harsh as it sounds it has to change to survive, it has to be ruthless, it has to start thinking like a business. It may sound right to hand out food and free goods to the needy but the long term facts are very compelling. Go try and account for the hundreds of billions of dollars of aid to Africa. As moving and generous as it has been the net result is increased misery, no solution to the underlying problems and a dependency culture. This is why the Chinese will outcompete the west and they'll end up helping Africans in much more tangible and long term ways than all of our well meant but ultimately damaging aid program's.
Benefits damage society much more than facing up to the cause of the need ( hint it's never a simple lack of money.)
Imho.