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Since we're dealing in anecdotes:
avhg1, I didn't come from a privileged background, either. My brother was born with a congenital illness that made it difficult if not impossible for us to get health insurance. Neither of my parents went to college. My dad worked a working-class job and got paid a decent wage that kept us just out of poverty. We got government cheese and butter and stuff, but so did most of the people in our poor-ish rural midwestern farming community. My parents made some stupid decisions (like my dad's penchant for buying used cars that didn't work, oh, and his cocaine habit) but we had good family support and some genetic predisposition to intelligence that had us kids come out all right. I put myself through college with scholarships, grants, and some loans that I'm still paying back.
Now you know my background.
We didn't get a lot of help, and I worked my way out of the cycle of poverty, too. But I had a few things going for me, in addition to just working hard: 1. parents who valued education, even though (or because) they didn't have it themselves; 2. the brains to get scholarships to a private college; 3. health care when I was an adult to deal with the mental and physical health problems that are the statistical lot of people who grow up in poverty. Not all people have these advantages. Not all people CAN work harder, smarter, whatever. How can you learn to fish well if you're bipolar, or borderline retarded, or a high-school dropout, or an unwed teen parent? Using the "well they should help themselves" argument to reduce the availability of assistance dooms people who have made one bad choice, or had bad circumstances, and who can't do what you and I did, to a life of no hope, no way out. Demanding that others work their way out of a bad situation just because you were able to neglects all of the various circumstances that people in need face. Absolutely, people who are able to work should do so, and absolutely there is a sense of entitlement in this country (not just among the poor) that extends beyond the basic needs, and negates personal responsibility. But to hold the individual solely responsible for this neglects the cultural and institutional role in creating the context in which the individual finds him/her self, and is a poor argument against social responsibility for helping those individuals become self-reliant if they can.
It's not "individual responsibility" vs. "welfare state;" The only thing that works is both/and: creating an environment in which individuals who are otherwise unable to take responsibility for meeting their own needs are able to find the means to do so. Removing the social safety net, or lowering the qualifying bar for those who should receive it, does nothing to create that environment.
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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
- Anatole France
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