Who does more harm to the middle class? Welfare recipients or rich/corp.?

I'm getting into it with some people on a mixed board. Somebody started a thread about how screwed up welfare is and how they are working while the poor do nothing to help themselves and live the good life off his dime.

Of course, there were the usual examples of people having more babies to get extra money, how they have better cars and clothes than them, they just need to get a job, etc.

So, I posted some myths juxtaposed with actual facts and statistics. (Some yahoo claimed they were skewed toward the liberal agenda. Yeah, the American Psychological Association is a hotbed of liberal propaganda.)

Anyway, it all boils down to their struggling and it's all the fault of the poor people. When confronted with the fact that it was such a small part of the budget, some guy even came up with an equation that poor people are taking at least $300 annually from his family and he wants it back.

So, how would you approach this? How do you focus people's attention on the right target? What facts would you bring up?

always say, "why should I have to pay for these people to sit on their ass and do nothing."

I always respond by asking, "why should your tax dollars pay for these rich corporations to sit on their ass and make money."

who are living in tents on the Gulf Coast. In stead of worrying about the so-called "welfare state," they could be practicing what they preach by supporting HARD WORKING Americans who contribute to society.

There is no question that Corporations, mostly cc and banks sector and healthcare/pharma have had a negative effect on the middle class over the last 40 years.
Read anything Professor Elizabeth Warren has written
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/warren.html

other good articles
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/1917-cn.htm
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/09/04_sanders.html

Seriously. Ask them, if welfare is so wonderful and recipients live so high on the hog, then why aren't these people quitting their jobs and taking welfare instead? They'll say tht of course they have too much self-respect, but you know that's a lie. these are the same people that'll happily cheat on taxes and brag about getting too much change back from the store. The asinine crap that the right spews about welfare is laughable-so if it were true, who on earth wouldn't try and get on the welfare rolls?

and remind them to have six babies on top of it.

In fact: I would go so far as to say that if it wasn't for the level of greed from these gluttons, we would only have a small fraction of people having to go on welfare.

There is absolutely no excuse for the level of poverty in this country with all the wealth we produce. There is absolutely no excuse for all the jobs that get exported for nothing else but to increase already rich fuckers' bottom line. There is absolutely no excuse for the the ever increasing wage-gap between the greedy corporate big-wigs vs the laborer's who's labor actually creates this vast wealth.

If I were King for a day, I'd bitch-slap greedy corporate policies in this country so fucking hard.

I can't stand these corporate motherfuckers.............

holding two or three part-time jobs - can't argue they are lazy.

Currently the ranks of the poor are being expanded by the lower end of the middle class, due to rising costs of well, pretty much everything, while wages are not rising or even dropping.

http://csmonitor.com/2004/0419/p16s03-cogn.html

How to earn $3.5 trillion and pay zero taxes
By David R. Francis

The April 2 release of a General Accounting Office report on corporate taxes could hardly have been better timed to get press attention. Just as millions of Americans were filling out their federal 2003 tax forms to beat the April 15 deadline, the GAO study indicated that most corporations owed no taxes from 1996 to 2000, a boom period for corporate profits.

Those untaxed corporations earned $3.5 trillion of revenues...

That should get you where you want to go pretty fast. :)

our "safety net". Why? Because when you're unemployed and desperate, corporations can pay you whatever they feel like, which is inevitably next to nothing. You see, they want you "over a barrel" and in a position to "work cheap or starve".

has never been greater and it is accelerating