After living in a very poor region of the US for a few years, coming from quite affluent areas like Silicon Valley/SF, I've grown to substantially disapprove of

After living in a very poor region of the US for a few years, coming from quite affluent areas like Silicon Valley/SF, I've grown to substantially disapprove of handouts. At the local grocery store, 90+% of the people I follow through the cashier lanes are paying for their groceries with EBT. What I see these folks buying is carts full of overpriced packaged foods with out of control kids often carrying tubs of Ben and Jerries ice cream one per child. They are absolutely not spending responsibly and living frugally, their lives of excess are being subsidized and as they say easy come, easy go. When I socialize with the locals, they're all on food stamps and promote it as a way of life if they learn I'm not currently taking handouts. I'm literally peer pressured to get on the EBT program, many have argued they want as many people on it as possible because the more people supported by it the less likely it is to be taken away. These are perfectly capable people who choose to spend their lives horsing around and smoking pot all day. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, but I do take issue with deliberately abusing social programs to fund it. One annoying effect is because of these programs, I'm surrounded by people whose lives are precariously built upon a system that can vanish rather suddenly from political events like the current president getting elected. There's been murmurings of EBT qualifications changing to cut down spending on these programs, and many expect it to happen should this president be re-elected. If that occurs, the crime in my community (and many like it) is going to absolutely explode because the programs have been supporting lives for too long and these people have grown far too comfortable on unstable ground. When I see a headline "Unconditional handouts benefit recipients and their neighbors" I immediately think to myself "It's not unconditional when the program is conditional on the current government's decision to continue it". When you have large-scale populations becoming entirely dependent on such programs for their livelihoods, and yes, in poor, low-cost areas you can and people will 100% survive off as little as $1000/mo, you have a weaponized community where the trigger for releasing rampant crime and instability concentrated in low-income neighborhoods is the single decision to cut handouts. Now I don't think having these programs is a good idea at all, it seems to create more problems than it solves. I would rather us find ways to wean people off EBT to the point of all but eliminating it, and forget this UBI-like crap unless it's more permanent, like in the form of an amendment to the constitution.