Scamming Welfare
Middle Class People Who Use Welfare
By Daniel Muniz

A friend of mine dropped by his local supermarket, which was in the suburbs, to buy a small handful of groceries as well as baby milk formula for his infant son. At the checkout counter, the young cashier laughed out loud when my buddy pulled cash out from his wallet to pay for everything that he was buying. The youthful cashier explained that he was his very first customer of the day to actually pay for baby milk formula since nearly everyone used some form of government assistance to buy such basic necessities.

Of course my friend was bewildered.

He has never been enrolled in any kind of entitlement program and he had always paid cash for baby milk formula as he had always done for all of his children. But what struck him was that he lived out in the suburbs where the median income was above the average from the rest of the city so there shouldn’t be droves of people needing this kind of government assistance to purchase foodstuff.

Incidentally, as I had spent my high school years in the same suburban area of my colleague, many of my friends who had worked part-time jobs in the same supermarket as cashiers and baggers often recounted similar experiences. Suburbanite customers (who were sometimes the neighbors of the teenage employees) used the welfare system to scam the basic necessities even though they were affluent enough to afford it on their own, especially when they pulled into the supermarket parking lot driving a late model car.

Many of my teenage and college age friends and acquaintances who worked there were disgusted to see so many middle class and affluent people blatantly abusing welfare.

Although I had grown up poor in the barrio, it had never occurred to me that middle class suburbanites (including lots of white people) would actually have the gall to enroll in any kind of welfare program. As a little kid, I had known a number of my peers whose parents were on the public dole, including a few relatives. However, since I was part of a scrappy working class family during my early childhood, welfare was the ultimate shame particularly since my parents crafted a plan to get us out of the barrio (in which they eventually succeeded).

As I became a full grown adult and a degreed professional earning a good salary, it irked me to see people I personally knew scamming the system. One time I was at a barbeque at a neighbor’s house where a friend of mine told me that I ought to sign up for the local WIC (Women, Infant, Children) program because of the recent birth of my son. As with any entitlement program, it had plenty of freebies which included certain groceries.

Since I didn’t take his suggestion seriously, I laughed and explained that I didn’t need it because I was already in a high tax bracket. However, my friend was serious about it and he told me that although he too was also in a high tax bracket, his family was already enjoying WIC. His wife simply told the WIC provider that her husband had left her so she is now a single mother (which was totally bogus). And since there was absolutely no verification or documentation required, my friend’s wife was able to sign up for WIC even though she drove a brand new mid-size SUV.

I was infuriated to discover my friend’s shenanigan. But what had bothered me the most was the ease of how so middle class people exploited the system. Governmental agencies who dole out these entitlements want large numbers of people using their services because it justifies their continued existence. And it is totally irrelevant whether or not someone is actually qualified to receive these benefits.

One doesn’t have to look very hard to find horror stories of middle class people who abuse welfare.

But what is far worse are the poverty warriors who defend a corrupt system that has been easily exploited for decades. If anyone has the temerity to suggest reforming these generous entitlements so that only the truly needy can use them, poverty warriors will instantly brand such people as racists, hate-mongers, and heartless.

I am not opposed to the concept of entitlement programs because I happen to know plenty of people who grew up in tragic situations such as a breadwinner dying or becoming indefinitely incapacitated. And I have also known people whose fathers had walked out on them which plunged their broken family into poverty. There are a lot of heart-wrenching but legitimate circumstances in which there are families in dire need of a safety net.

However, I do oppose the idea of able-bodied poor people using welfare as a crutch for the rest of their lives. There are plenty of ways to escape poverty and entitlement programs provide the perverse incentive to stay impoverished for a lifetime.

And it is completely outrageous for the middle-class to exploit entitlements designated for the poor. These benefits are not free because somebody (notably the taxpayer) has to pay for them. Middle class miscreants who are filching welfare programs need to be severely punished with huge fines and maybe even with jail time for chronic abusers. In addition, bureaucrats who allow the system to be abused need to be fired and replaced with more conscientious public servants.

Such entitlements can be reformed but only with taxpayers rising up and challenging a bureaucracy that has run amok.

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