Fox News on Welfare Leeches, Shame and Who Deserves to Leech on the Government

This is such a beautiful piece of television journalism, right? 




Vague insinuations, a carefully picked anecdotal interview, lots of emotional arguments based on...what?  A graph showing the impact of Medicare and Medicaid (health care access for the elderly and some groups of the poor)  on a drop in poverty from the 1960s to 1970s and then no drop (because there were no additional large changes in what makes people poor).  And what do we conclude from this chain of events?

That people have become welfare leeches because there hasn't been any further drops!

The funniest bit of all is the argument that Stossel has paid for HIS government freebies but those "other people", they have not!  What if they, too, paid for it all before they got it?  No investigation into that, naturally.

If we took these folks seriously I would think that Stossel should refuse to use his Medicare.  He is loaded with money, he can afford all uninsured care, and that way he would be less of a leech on the society, right?

Hasselbach then complains about welfare payments beating the minimum wage incomes in many states.  I haven't checked if that is true, but the conclusion Hasselbach draws seems to be that the welfare payments should be lowered.  That assumes, of course, that one can support a family, say, on minimum wages.  Unless you don't care if people survive or not, of course.

And sure, there are people who misuse the social safety net.  The answer to that is to attack the misuse, not the safety net.

What else can we say about that little conversation?  Take the idea of shame.  The panel wants shame back, so that people "accepting handouts" will feel shame.

A great idea!  Let's make sure that this is also true for corporate welfare!  Let's publicly shame all those responsible for the collapse of the housing markets and the financial markets!  Let's publicly shame all those who give money to their friends from the government coffers and who try to bribe politicians into doing their private bidding for them in the public arenas.

If shame is good for one use then it must be good for other uses, too.