You know how it is when you’re at the mall and someone rattles a collection box under your nose and you’re not sure where it’s going but it’s probably for Darfur or Rwanda or Hoogivsastan. Whatever. You’re dropping a buck or two in the tin for the privilege of not having to think about it. For the more ideologically committed, there’s always the awareness-raising rock concert: it’s something to do with Bono and debt forgiveness, whatever that means, but let’s face it, going to the park for eight hours of celebrity caterwauling beats having to wrap your head around Afro-Marxist economics. The modern welfare state operates on the same principle: since the Second World War, the hard-working middle classes have transferred historically unprecedented amounts of money to the unproductive sector in order not to have to think about it. But so what? We were rich enough that we could afford to be stupid.

That’s $57,000 per year. Neither parent of this state-subsidized ginger colony has a job. Indeed, Mr. Davey quit his job nine years ago when he realized he’d make more living off the government dole.

(I guess they photographed the family before church and that’s why dad is wearing a tie. He clearly hasn’t embraced fuzzy-slippered indolence quite the way that mum has.)

Rep. John Linder (R-GA): “Is it your testimony that $953 billion [in welfare spending next year] is not enough?”

Carmen Nazario (U.S. Dept. Health and Human Services): “Who’s to say what is enough?”

H/T Mitch P.