[Old Teufel Hunden]

"Government checks of all kinds - in aggregate - skew the recipients attitudes to be more favorable to the status quo and the continued receipt (and growth) of those government checks."

I have followed your conversation with interest. As I am a retired Marine. After putting in 22 years of various duties including the drill field, combat and humping the hills in the infantry I feel I can safely say that I earned my government check. My fellow veterans that have gotten wounded in combat defending this great country have by all means "earned" their disability check as far as I'm concerned.

My beef with government checks are the ones who haven't "earned" them. People who get government checks simply because they are poor or without a job. These people used to be taken care of by charitable organizations within the community. Now the government has co-opted those community organizations and they are but an arm of the government. Americans are some of the most generous people in the world. I am in several veterans organizations and I've seen with my own eyes the level of charity the American people have. America worked best when the government was not involved in the charity. Those government checks should be eliminated. The ones to veterans who have retired (i.e. did 20+ years) or who have service connected disabilities have been earned IMO. Those were incentives given to us to sign up to defend our country against all enemies foreign and domestic. It is one of the reasons we have in the constitution as a function of the federal government (national defense).

[RFEngineer]

” America worked best when the government was not involved in the charity. “

I agree with you on this.

Nobody is talking about combat-wounded being denied support - we should be worried about this. If we do not reign in government checks to the overwhelming majority of Americans who benefit from them, the day will come (who knows when specifically) when the checks for even catastrophically wounded veterans will stop (or become worthless)

That is when we will all need to reclaim the spirit of charity that, as you point out, has been co-opted and destroyed by government.