You might find the documentary Waging a Living eye-opening - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47971968

They look at upsides, but don't look at downsides. A case of "grass is always greener on the other side". Plus maybe small lack of empathy.

It started getting particularly nasty with Reagan's "welfare queens" campaign, which focused on a woman incarcerated for egregious fraud and portrayed her case as if it were the norm, playing not only on fears that welfare was rife with fraud and abuse but also on prejudices against women and non-whites.

To this day, many people envision the welfare system as creating a class of people living luxurious lives off the taxpayer's dime without having to do any work themselves. That this is a far more accurate description of the very representatives still benefiting from such propaganda is a salient historical irony.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen See: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/12/20/255819681...