Welfare and American Ideals

A large part of middle class America's aversion to welfare comes from what we discussed today as a "fear of laziness." For a class driven by the idea that rewards come only with hard work, letting our hard earned taxes pay for someone else to sit idle is an horrifying idea. Unfortunately, we let our instinct to defend the American work ethic get in the way of defending another American ideal that may be just as important - a fundamental of our legal system and our view of the individual. We consider an individual to be innocent until proven guilty, ostensibly because we feel it is worse for an innocent citizen to be punished than for a guilty citizen to be spared. If in tightening up welfare, we successfully reduce the amount of fraud, we haven't necessarily made an improvement. It's better to have some freeloaders weighing down the system while every person in need has access to aid than to make welfare so air-tight that the people who need it most are locked out.