I understand people's indignation at people who receive some kind of public assistance and seemingly shouldn't. But really, getting your knickers in a knot about this small, small minority does a disservice to the many people who try very hard to move off welfare.
Here are a couple of reasons not to get so worked up (from
http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/myths.html):
1. Public assistance programs (not counting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) make up only 1% of the federal budget, and about 2% of most state budgets.
2. "Analyses indicate that
56 percent of AFDC support ended within 12 months, 70 percent within 24 months, and almost 85 percent within 4 years (Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 1996). These exit rates clearly contradict the widespread myth that AFDC recipients wanted to remain on public assistance or that welfare dependency was permanent. Unfortunately, return rates were also high, with 45 percent of ex-recipients returning to AFDC within 1 year. Persons who were likely to use AFDC longer than the average time had less than 12 years of education, no recent work experience, were never married, had a child below age 3 or had three or more children, were Latina or African American, and were under age 24 (Staff of House Committee on Ways and Means, 1996)."
Furthermore, a few studies have indicated that something like 20-30% of welfare recipients are "unemployable" due to mental or physical disabilities.
Why don't you get equally worked up about the rich guy who gets first crack at IPOs because he's already a large institutional investor, or the corporate agriculture company that gets paid for NOT planting, or gets heavily subsidized so they can undercut growers from other countries? I understand the impulse that leads to the really strong sense of unfairness that someone else can get something for nothing and you're busting your ass to make do, but really you'd be better served to get pissed about something that affects you more.