We are losing the intellectual battle, and here is proof.
Believe it or not, this guys entitlement mentality is pervasive in our culture today. Look at the recent elections for all the proof you will need. Obviously "more of the same" isn't going to help the situation, so what is the plan folks? Can this be rectified, or is it time to abandon these idiots to the inevitable demise their actions warrant?
SOURCE URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7OAmrQis0M
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
Alexis de Tocqueville
His E.R. bill could be our last obligation to him.
What stresses of life is this guy getting away from, exactly? Wow!
"Can this be rectified, or is it time to abandon these idiots to the inevitable demise their actions warrant?"
This isn't an either/or situation. Abandoning them to their demise IS how we rectify this. This is real simple. Take away that $200/month and the situation will rectify itself. Either he starts to work for his food or he starves. The government programs are enabling bad behavior. The current situation is no different than throwing money at drunk bums.
I wonder how long his parents would feed and house him so he could surf all day if he didn't have the giveaways he currently enjoys.
So he is 110% moocher, as we see here, getting a free $200/Mo for filling out a piece of paper once a year. But he can't survive on that can he?
It says he bums with friends or girlfriends so he slides on housing expenses, but he drives a nice truck so he should be paying gas, maybe a car payment, and insurance. He could be skipping the insurance but he'd still need gas to get around.
The $200 is food only which can't last a whole month could it? If he says he regularly buys lobster and sushi and spends an average of $5 (purely guessing, probably more than this) that would be 40 meals a month. Does he only eat one meal per day?
Aside from all this I have to agree with other commenters that we need to get rid of these handouts and maybe these people will realize they have to take care of themselves. I don't know a single person who isn't angry at a guy like this spending their tax dollars so he could be a surf bum.
Last month there was a major story about food stamp recipients buying food, and shipping the food to Haiti for sale on their black market. Nobody seemed to care....
This guy is so damn blatant about his refusal to take care of himself, that everyone is 'pissed'!
Add to that, that he gets to party and surf every day...while we get to work for his sustenance...and you have the poster child of liberalism gone amok.
Besides: If a reporter had to follow him for a month to find out what else he gets for 'free', it would be too stressful for him/her to endure. ;-)
But those stories never grew 'legs'. They were too big for the low information voter to get their minds around.
The surfing bum is something that they can understand.
I understand the problem. Fox news focusing on this loser getting $200 a month or whatever is pure bellyaching IMHO.
On the other hand -- "Half of all new SNAP participants received benefits for 10 months or less in the mid 2000s, up from 8 months in the early 2000s. Single parent families and elderly individuals tended to stay in the program longer than did working poor individuals, childless adults without disabilities, and noncitizens. Seventy-four percent of new participants left the program within two years. This is an increase from 71 percent in the early 1990s."
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/08/09/...
The problem is not a matter of who is more deserving but rather who takes care of whom? I see the Goodwill competing with the Salvation Army. Goodwill has a pretty active campaign here in Austin, with billboards, touting their trainees as good hires.
The problem with government welfare is the same as the problem with government steel mills: they have the wrong information source, power not market, so they must make ignorant decisions. Not only do they fail to meet their goals - we all live and learn - but their mode makes success impossible. And in malinvesting resources, they cause secondary failures.