That would be Ebenezer Scrooge from the famous Charles Dickens tale, A Christmas Carol. And what this man is proposing sounds a lot like he and the Scrooge at the beginning of the tale would be very much in agreement.
Something does need to be done so that there are fewer people on welfare. This is not it.I can only speak from my own perspective, but having lived in a marginalized situation for all of my adult life, I can say that most people who end up on welfare are not lazy. Some are undereducated. Some made poor decisions earlier in their lives. And many end up marginalized due to health conditions, both physical and mental.
As a person who lives with a psychiatric illness that was misdiagnosed until I was nearly 40 years old, I can say that many people in impoverished and marginalized conditions do suffer from untreated or undertreated mental illness. Once I learned what was really wrong with me I was able to make some changes, but now that I am closing in on 50, I find it is very late in the game and my life could have been so much better.
Diagnosing and treating physical and mental illness in welfare recipients could go a long way to insuring that there would be fewer of them. But some might find prisons and poor houses to be easier. Out of sight out of mind.
