As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in between. There will be people who freeload, and there will be people who seize the opportunity to get themselves ou

As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in between. There will be people who freeload, and there will be people who seize the opportunity to get themselves out of poverty. There are surely hard working people who can't improve their situation because they are working two jobs just to support their family and can't get a better education, just as surely as there are people who would take the handout and buy booze. In my native Sweden, which has a much more generous social network than the US, it's clear that there are people who don't bother getting a job because they can live off unemployment. But social mobility is also higher than in the US; the correlation between income and parental income is weaker. It boils down to the question of how many freeloaders you are willing to accept for each person that these policies help become self-sufficient. One way is to try to calculate the minimum cost to society in the long run (based on policy cost, positive contribution of those who succeed, as well as external factors such as cost of crime). Another way is to make a judgement based on moral grounds (either that people should not be given handouts by society or that it is morally wrong to have people living in poverty.)