it's an opinion shared by a majority of other people. and since we live in a democratic society that kind of is how the system works around here for the most part.

we, as a society, have created the conditions that allow such an individual to choose to "opt out" rather than better themselves. but we can't get them to better themselves if the only option for them to do so comes at the hand of various NGOs which are ill-equipped to lend help to everyone who needs it. getting someone like that to become a functioning member of society is difficult and requires time and money -- things that several in this thread have argued should be spent on something else other than helping people succeed.

if we spend money on bigger and badder jails and create laws which punish such behavior then we are already spending a lot more money on punishment rather than assistance to break the addictive behaviors. i'm sure we could both find data to support whether or not treatment is more effective than incarceration, but one way or the other we pay the price for these people's behavior as a society. some of us think that instituting a program which breaks them of their habit and puts them on a better path is preferable to 20+ years in prison, but i suppose that's my opinion on this one too...

any societal problem can quickly be discredited with a specific abuser of the system. nothing in this world is perfect, but in all of the highly taxed countries where they offer programs which actually allow people to rise above their misfortune, i'm sure a few bad apples could be brought forward to prove that there is abuse of the system happening on a daily basis. it doesn't mean the programs are useless, it just means that every good host has a parasite. we can find ways to remove the parasites but we should not do so by killing the host.

when i was a child, the US was always meant to represent a place where someone could start at the bottom and literally work their way to the top. the older i get, the more i see the people at the top deliberately putting obstacles in the way of the people at the bottom to prevent them from reaching any kind of success in their lives. if you are not currently wealthy, your chance to make yourself wealthy is severely diminished by the history of cuts to services and benefits. everyone needs an equal chance or else we are no better than the Indian caste system, where your birth status determines what you are going to amount to before you can even take your first step.

actually, if this website went away i would spend quite a bit of time wondering what has become of everyone i've debated with here. i probably would not completely forget our interactions despite that we've never met.

i will say that you are correct that my assessment of how the rich are becoming wealthier off the backs of the working class is not much different than saying the poor are nothing but freeloading moochers of the government teat (or words to that effect). there are two points i want to make to that, one silly and the other serious. on the silly side, because of the relatively low number of billionaires, we can actually specify which billionaires are screwing us over by name. we can't say the same about the vast majority of the working poor.

on the serious side, over the last 20 years we've been seeing executive salary and corporate profits rise to their highest ever levels vs. GDP while worker salaries are at one of their lowest levels vs. GDP. it should not take a whole lot of thought to figure out why we have so many people in poverty, but apparently it takes more thought than some are willing to put in. the big problem i have is that we are told if we work harder, we can become successful but the reality is that if we work harder, we just die sooner with less worth than we had before.