Where do we draw the line between compassion and dependency?

It's a very tough question to address, let alone answer. Of course government aid programs come from a host of well meaning thoughts full of good intentions, but the problems quickly become apparent that it is nearly impossible to keep these programs under control and prevent them from turning into a mass of fraud and abuse.

Just in the last few days we've seen reports showing just how out of control these welfare programs are.

Firstly, how can we ever expect unemployment numbers to drop in any substantial way when in many states it actually pays more to collect welfare than it does to work 40 hours a week at minimum wage? Combine those statistics with the fact that Obama has removed the limits for how long people can collect welfare, and you can begin to see how these policies are accomplishing nothing but breeding more perpetual dependence on these programs.

Food stamp programs have surely helped many families and countless children to keep themselves nourished during tough times. Unfortunately, along with this we have reports showing that the government overpaid food stamp recipients by 2.1 Billion dollars last year. New USDA stats also show that a record 20% of all US households received SNAP benefits during 2013. That's 23 Million households! In some states the numbers are as high as 30+%! With no true work requirements we move deeper down the road of total dependence.

Sure they claim that you must be actively seeking employment while receiving these benefits, but there is also nothing stopping people from basically sabotaging their own chances of landing a job by purposefully doing a shoddy job of filling out job applications, thus completing the requirements of job seeking while simultaneously ensuring the flow of free money continues.

All of this is happening alongside the government cutting off unemployment benefits which actually is a better system because there is at least a bit more accountability when it comes to seeking employment. But the government wants you dependent, especially the liberals who grandstand as being the compassionate ones, while the reality is they are really acting more like drug dealers, giving you the "potent" stuff, (ie free "benefits" making you feel like you're getting something for nothing), extending these programs indefinitely and meanwhile the people are failing to realize that the longer they milk the system, the harder it becomes to get gainful employment.

Do you think a prospective employer will be impressed by an application that basically says you've been sitting around for the past 2 years collecting a check paid for by that employer's tax money? He probably would be and rightly should be offended. So this cycle continues to grind forward, spitting out the poor saps that bought into the nonsensical idea of a perpetual free lunch.

Then we come to probably the toughest program to pin down in terms of drawing a line, and that is SSI/Disability. West Virginia in particular just has gone through a big fiasco with disability judges and corruption and that's definitely not making this issue any easier to pin down. Obviously it's a noble thing to want to provide for those who physically cannot provide for themselves, but it is painfully obvious that this system is probably the worst breeding ground for fraud and abuse. This leads to people who genuinely are in need of help having to fight like dogs and pay a hefty price for legal representation to navigate the system, and also leads to things happening like addicts, alcoholics, and cases of mild depression getting paid, while people with much more debilitating (and not self inflicted) conditions being left to fight an increasingly uphill battle.

I definitely don't claim to have the answers to these problems. They have become so pervasive, so deeply entrenched in our culture that even if we made a commitment to work towards reform today, it would likely take years or even decades to find solutions, let alone implement them.

Complicating all of these matters even further is the growing income gap as the middle class is being increasingly squeezed, while those at the top can afford to buy politicians and procure huge amounts of corporate welfare. The richest of the rich are able to procure endless supplies of easy money at near zero interest and exponentially compound and centralize their wealth through derivatives, high frequency trading, and countless other market manipulations that the vast majority of people can't even begin to fully understand.

So once you step back and look at the bigger picture, it begins to become clear that what is touted as compassionate and love for the less fortunate is in reality nothing more than a shell game to transform what used to be our wonderful system of free market capitalism into nothing short of crony corporatism.

I implore all who read this to do your own research, learn all you can about these systems of control and together we can pick ourselves up and restore our republic to the great bastion of liberty that our founders envisioned.