A REALLY EXCELLENT PIECE BY KEVIN WILLIAMSON: Welfare’s Devastating Effect in The White Ghetto of Appalachia. “In effect, welfare has made Appalachia into a big and sparsely populated housing project — too backward to thrive, but just comfortable enough to keep the underclass in place. There is no cure for poverty, because there is no cause of poverty — poverty is the natural condition of the human animal.”

Robert Heinlein said something about that.