Comment by nobody9999

>Indeed, welfare benefits are often structured to disincentivize marriage, which in turn keeps people poor. Liberals often don’t appreciate that conservative social and economic views are synergistic like that.

I'd posit that it's not the benefits themselves that disincentivize such things, it's the rules surrounding how one accesses such benefits does so.

If our social programs didn't penalize such activities (through a variety of a restrictions on applying for and keeping such benefits) and we didn't make people jump through arbitrary and often degrading hoops to get them, all the while denigrating such folks as "lazy" or "greedy" or "worthless to society" I think that there wouldn't be such an issue to discuss.

What's more, at least in the US, there is a long tradition of blaming the poor for their poverty and assuming that it's their fault. Which makes it much more palatable to discriminate against those without means for many people.

But that's objectively false. There are many factors that impact poverty, some of which include specific legal and cultural incentives (both conscious and unconscious) which disadvantage certain people and advantage others.