There is another way of applying Aaron’s argument that welfare is a job’s program.  Once, not long after we had moved to Rockford, I was taking my family to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.  We had to drive through some interesting neighborhoods.  We looked at block after block of neglected houses, with young dissolute males lounging on the front steps.  It was about 11 in the morning, and one of my children asked innocently: “Don’t they have jobs to go to.”  In the sweetest voice I could muster, I explained: “Many of them work at night.”

And indeed they do, robbing, raping, and killing.  They couldn’t practice their favorite sports were we not paying them to be idle.  In other words, the taxes we pay for welfare are a means of subsidizing crime.