The Welfare Graph

Why the poor work so little: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/11/is_there_a_poverty_trap.cfm From a graph like that you might think that there aren't any poor people in this country. In any case, it would appear that the welfare machine does not allow too many families with children to slip into poverty--and not a single senior. For poor women, a child produces a shower of government largesse for herself plus free food, education, medical care, etc for her child. Result: no sense of individual responsibility and rampant single motherhood. But, the socialists presume that the world was an intolerably cruel place before all these corrupting handouts were instituted.  It was not. People adapt to their circumstances. They had other buffers to guard against misfortune and deprivation: responsibility, foresight, fortitude, reasonable expectations, religion, family, private charity. All of these natural buffers, cultivated and strengthened and refined by our civilization for centuries, have been badly undermined by the massive socialist-bureaucratic leveling machine. The only real comfort at this point is that the text of our Constitution has been so little altered in the course of the revolution wrought by FDR. But, still, isn't it strange that the government should have suffered such gross alterations as to be rendered unrecognizable--without changing the Constitution? The letter remains, but the spirit is gone.