This is a pretty obnoxious, nuance-free headline for this post about a really well done, nuanced article. The thrust of the article is that the increasing amount of people who have no choice but to accept government help are a) usually aware of it and b) very conflicted about accepting the help.

It sounds like they'd like to get to a society where their government is self-sufficient and not promising a level of benefits it can't possibly sustain over the long term, while at the same time everyone can live a at a level of basic dignity.

I think that's a completely valid thing to be concerned about, so I don't really think it's very useful to make it sound like it's some Tea Party stereotype screaming about people relying on government handouts while he's in the unemployment line.

Colin +

The Merc should run an article on how the rural counties of Oregon are subsidized by Portland, Salem, Eugene and Grants Pass-Ashland. Yes we love them. No don't poop on us in the legislature. Let's get Oregon legislators together.

@ 3,

1) We don't give away hundreds of billions in foreign aid. Wikipedia has the FY 2010 number as 52.7B, which is actually very low, relative to GDP.

2) You're completely right that slashing defense spending would be a great way to make up for the OBJECTIVELY DEMONSTRATED shortfalls.

3) The article didn't have anything to do with answers to the problem, just the scope of the problem itself for real people, and their reactions to it. Different people will agree on different answers to the problem, but those were beyond the article.

For instance, I'm sure#2 above would find different answers to the problem, but that doesn't mean we aren't seeing the same problem and thinking in a grown-up way about potential answers.

Rather, it's aggro fuckfaces like you that help keep everyone frothingly divided and engaged in useless, toxic shouting, so kudos on that one. Working out pretty well then, is it?

I wonder how much the insurance premiums are going to be on the 70somethings with heart problems or the woman on $1220 a month of Social Security if they get rid of Medicare in favor of vouchers.

Don't even get me started. I personally know over a dozen hiv infected middle-aged men who are relatively healthy (low viral loads) and have been living on various sorts of dole for years now. They get free medical care, get food stamps, disability and continue to party like 1979.

Where is commentator Savage and his ilk on this? Slippery Santorum might stink, but we've got a lot of rotten eggs in our own nest.

Don't you love it when someone at New Seasons buys $20/lb. Spanish cheese and Irish butter with a food stamp card?

They don't even have the wits to support local producers that pay SS taxes so it doesn't run dry on them.

Sure I party with these disco divas who strut their gym bodies, but it gets more than old when I got to scrape the frost off my wind shield to go to work every day.

Never been on food stamps and can't afford health care. Why do I have to subsidize my perfectly employable sisters?

Why did I behave myself all those years?

And please don't confuse a wish for integrity as homophobic. Please, Mary.

Do you know why the Iranian regime stays in power? It pays each of its citizens cash every month- enough to survive. Hard cash from oil production. Would you revolt and want regime change if you knew the next government probably wouldn't pay you off to stay quiet every day?

US-backed sanctions against Iran are meant to cut these cash outlays to starve people into revolt.

Not even in America does EVERYONE get cash every month from the Treasury.

But everyone on food stamps, unemployment, social security is keen to have that continue indefinitely. Obama and the Democrats are in effect buying votes by ensuring entitlements continue even if we really can't afford them if everyone is sucking off the system instead of paying into it.

I support the Democrats for other reasons. But there will be a point economically where outlays can no longer outpace inputs.

There is a solution that would keep your fat American pioneer asses on the couch with enough food from food stamps and cash for cable tv and smartphone contracts.

Open up the borders and let immigrants support all the entitlement queens if they don't want to be productive. Face it, you wouldn't scrub toilets and pick strawberries if you had to. Oh, maybe for a month or two, ok.

You'd rather stand in line for hand outs than flip burgers. Professors, architects, real estate agents, waiters, and teachers. Immigrant work is beneath you. It's humbling enough that some of you get $2K a month in extension after extension of unemployment payouts.

Hard working immigrants will come here and create their own prosperity. And, proportionately wouldn't sponge off the system any more than Michele Bachman types who by the way got a $200,000 farm subsidy in 2008. She didn't even need it but that amount cut off 20 welfare mothers with 2 children nonetheless.

Why do you think Germany is so able to bail out Greece? They are older and less reproductive than Americans. The hard working Turks, who they call "blacks" by the way, have propped up entitlements for a spoiled Aryan uber-class since the 1970s. The expansion of the EU eastward and southward was basically a handy way to get the hard working poor to support the lazy rich.

We can do the same here. Open up the borders and let the hardest working people in the world, yes, the Mexicans, support your whiny Ph.D. ass.