Call me a sucker, but generalizing about any population is bound to leave lots of room for exceptions to the prevailing view.
This thread caught me at the right time of year. There is an organization in my city that delivers Thanksgiving meals to the needy. A few years ago, my wife, three kids and I signed up for delivery detail. One of the recipients lived in the most hellish high rise housing project you can imagine. At the first address we had been given, there was no answer to our knock. The gangbangers in the hallway told us the old man had moved upstairs and gave us his new apartment number. At the second doorway stood an amputee. His bed was a bare mattress on the floor. His table was a cardboard box and his chair was a folding lawn chair. There were no other possessions in the apartment. We unloaded all of our meals into his refrigerator and went back to the main kitchen to let them know we had taken matters into our own hands and given away all of the food. They were happy to load us up again for the rest of our rounds.
I have also seen food stamp users buy a pack of gum and then turn around and spend the cash change on beer. But some of the needy really are needy.
Happy Thanksgiving. I, for one, said a prayer of thanks that there was food on my table.
