You can bet when the economy starts to improve and people are going back to work thats when our government will take steps to get spending under control. The gov't will shrink and some of us will not survive the cuts. Sure hope all this free willy money spending is available then. Having said that, the unemployed need our help. I have to assume that the majority are legit.
I was out for almost a year after Egghead went down during the dot com bust. 300 of us within a month +\-.
Looking for IT positions, I would scour all ads every day and send out 14+ resumes, each custom tailored to the ad, and many email + hard copy.
The
one reply beyond a courtesy "we got your email" auto-reply or post card I got, was a nice note that said I had made it to level 2 of the selection process.
It went on to say that the desktop support position I applied for, starting at $14/hr (roughly the same wage as a journeyman grocery cashier)
with a private community college, had over 400 applicants (This was spring 2001).
Needless to say, with a shiny new MS certification, I was out the next round.
I finally ended up working with a friend at a baseball stadium for the summer @ $10/hr + some overtime,
and when that dried up late in the fall as we were getting laid off for the winter, I gave up my pride and dot com exuberance,
called the hiring manager I knew at USPS (still had a local office those days), and was hired back after leaving 3 years earlier (lack of hours to support a family),
on the cusp of my rehire retain-service eligibility.
We did trips to the food bank more than once.....
That is why, after I passed testing and was hired into maintenance, I list the food bank and a select handful of low overhead charities
that support people in their struggles with heating, food, and shelter assistance, every year via CFC,
increasing my contribution as a percentage of my ongoing step increases.
I have no issue with the vast majority of people who need federal assistance, and if you look closely for EBT transactions when you are in a grocery checkout line,
you will see the variety of people, many you wouldn't suspect, that depend on your tax dollars' benefit.