Being poor and having to survive on such a small amount of money that your kids can't afford school meals is already bad enough without ppl insisting that you're poor because you're bad with money, or stupid, or lazy.

The ppl who seem to imagine that being compassionate is a sign of naïveté and ignores the "facts" are the same ppl who enjoy the dignity of not having their life dispassionately dissected in the way they feel entitled to do with others' lives.

It is the belief in this inherent dignity that ought to underscore our benefits system, not the belief in our right to arbitrarily pass judgement and cynically assume the very worst of people whose lives already lack this crucial value which dignity affords.

Our benefits system is broken not because people take advantage of it (though of course some do - its provisions are so poor that it's hard not to, in many cases), but because it is founded on cynicism and a punitive sense of self-righteousness, and so its structure is flawed.

Discussions about poverty which exclude an assumption of the basic human right of inherent dignity are not discussions at all, but excuses to kick people while they are down and to expect to do so with moral impunity.

It isn't clever; it's cowardly.

P. S. FWIW, treating ppl with dignity empowers them; telling them they're shit for failing to flourish amid the mess that is humanity will give them the very identity you accuse them of being born with...