The trouble is, not many people will challenge their own assumptions.
The Republican idea that the poor are pampered by the delicious free lunch of food stamps and Medicaid is - when you think about it - a strange claim.
At best, unemployment benefits are a means for desperate folks to survive. But they hardly compete with a decent job if one is available.
Unfortunately, not everyone has the skills or genius to go off and start their own business, let alone access to the capital required to do so. So they depend upon the existence of employment opportunities.
And during hard times, where are these opportunities? First, we know they are few and far between. Second, we know the folks who have money are hoarding.
So rather than basking in the luxury of unemployment benefits, perhaps the following story is true.
During tough times, a safety net actually helps save decent people and their families from catastrophe. The New Deal was written because the experience of utter misery taught a previous generation that depressions are nasty things, that the burden of individual hardship ends up affecting the whole of society and that it is in everyone's interest to have the bleeding edge of poverty dulled a little.
We have another word for the conditions generated by the sympathy-free, Marie-Antoinette, let-them-and-their-kids-eat-cake version of existence. The word is Dickensian.
Wrapped in wise-sounding phrases about thrift and personal responsibility, and the conceit that the poor are simply lazy, it is so easy not to give a damn. But actually, it is a form of insensitivity and cruelty to want to take away the little protection that is afforded to people who are desperate.
Economically, it is also bad policy.
Please sir, can I have some more?
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