It's neat how you picked an example that doesn't apply to my point. I fully understand the difficult situation people get "stuck" in. The reason people are "st

It's neat how you picked an example that doesn't apply to my point. I fully understand the difficult situation people get "stuck" in. The reason people are "stuck" is many times because no one is telling or showing them that there are ways out. They are simply mailing them a check to hold them over until the next check. But I know more than a handful of people who got out of the ghetto and welfare situations and it wasn't a government program that pulled them out. There was community help, like churches, for instance. But in almost every case they bootstrapped their way out. They started by deciding to be honest. They accepted responsibility. They listened to good advice. When flat broke, what are you going to lose by moving? What do you have to move? Not much. Try something, anything. My overarching point is that welfare handouts hurt more people than they help in the long term. They create reliance instead of independence. EDIT: As I thought about this a bit more, I realized your scenario and my point are not that far apart. The 40 year old woman with a high school diploma and 3 kids in your example may not be able to change her own circumstances that easily but she has three little minds that she can mold day after day about rising above those circumstances. Instead, what we usually see is poverty passed on to the next generation. If she accepts poverty as a way of life she is more likely to pass the mindset on to her kids.