Thanks for sharing this. Having worked with welfare recipients (in a completely different capacity than a social worker — I was teaching them how to use their new EBT cards in California), I saw how desperate so many of them are, and how ashamed they were to be on welfare in the first place; and I saw how many had simply given up hope that they could ever get out of the system and start making it on their own.

Granted there were some “welfare kings and queens” who were proud of that fact and laughed at the system, but they hardly represented the majority, or even a significant minority, of the people I met.