>>12
I find it difficult to believe that you don't watch "any news media", particularly since this very site could be classified as such. Even still, our media ecologies are complex things these days, and "real objective information" is pretty damn hard to come by. At any rate, your lack of exposure to Fox news has no bearing on the fact that your language is representative of its content.
I have argued for the moral, political, and logical reasons for public assistance(welfare, entitlements, whatever...)in another exchange. As you have presented personal experiences and observations I shall respond in kind. I have seen welfare recipients. I am from a city with a large number of them. A city that has rarely dropped out of the top five in murders in the US in the last 20 years. It's even made #2. But nobody beats Detroit. And I lived among these people for many years.
I'm not a democrat or a republican either. In fact, I expatriated myself 10 years ago, and after a lifetime of voting, never missing even the smallest election, and even voting by absentee ballot while in the military, I stopped. While abroad I had the chance to observe poverty in many countries all over the world. And here's what I've learned. Poverty is the result of a combination of three factors, present in every case, in varying proportions. 1. Inadequate resources. 2. Inefficient distribution of resources. 3. What I'll call the X factor. You see, I'm a lazy man. Incredibly lazy. I do very little, yet I am still able to live a comfortable and independent life. Because in this wealthy society making money is easy. I'd go so far as to say that if you can't make money in this society, then there's just plain something wrong with you. I don't know what it is, and I don't care. I've seen poor people everywhere, and there always have been poor people, and poor people will be around until we figure out that X factor. But we haven't figured it out yet(though education is a hell of a start). So in the mean, the smart thing to do, the economical thing to do, the humane thing to do, is to feed and shelter these people. 'Cause it really is a minor thing, and the sooner we can agree on that simple thing, and deal with it, the sooner we can move on to fighting the corrupt, ambitious, greedy warmongers who currently own us.