But not all of us are convinced everyone receiving that assistance is abusing the system. And hopefully, none of us sincerely believes the children of these abusers deserve to be punished too.

The "welfare queen" is always painted as a crack-snorting ghetto black, but more and more these days, its some white suburban or small town meth-head or opioid addict.

I think we are going to learn real soon that the poverty creates social decay, not the other way round, and that the only way to stop it is more and better jobs. Everyone realizes giving tax money to the poor will always be just a temporary fix. By itself, it will not solve the problem, but shutting it off it will certainly make it worse.

As long as we promote and subsidize an economy that feels it needs to employ as few people as possible, and pay them as little as it can get away with, the problem will only get worse. The Beast is not just in the bad part of town any more, its moving in right next door.

I AM the community. I've always been part of it, but I've always known it. My "wealth and surplus" never convinced me otherwise, I know perfectly well how little my brains, righteousness and work ethic had to do with it. I was lucky, and I had help, and I haven't forgotten. I am painfully aware how tenuous and threatened my current prosperity is, and how greedily it is envied by others, who only see it as a way to finance their tax cuts. Every tax break for the wealthy brings the Beast closer to my door. No one is safe, except those who will benefit most by this new budget. They will be secure, at least for a little while, but only because they have cut the rest of us adrift. Its what they call Freedom.