A friend of mine had been volunteering at one of the resource centers, working with families on welfare just after the reform, explaining the changes to the system. My friend had a very frustrating job, as she saw a lot of apathy and lack of motivation. She asked her mentor what she could do to get people to be proactive, to be responsible. Her mentor replied: "The one thing, the greatest thing you can do for them to encourage them to be more responsible is to give them responsibility." 

The problem is, people rebel against responsibility. It's so much easier to have someone do the work for us, to be handed everything we want. So when it comes time to actually have to work, we are psychologically unable to. We live in a very spoiled world. Coming from just being spoiled with many nice gifts at Christmas, I want to make sure I stay focused on what's important. I like to think of myself as responsible; I understand the value of a job, no matter how difficult or laborious, a job is work, and the result of my hard work is money with which I can buy food, provide shelter, and clothing. I didn't need a Kindle, or a fancy new camera, or a few dozen ice cube trays. These are things I wanted, of course, and I am very grateful to have them, but my survival does not depend on whether I have these items or not. I want to go to Disney World again, but no one is going to just hand me the thousand dollars that is required to go. I need to work, to earn money, to save for the things I want. I'm not going to apply for welfare, I'm going to apply for jobs. I don't have all the answers; I only know that I observe more and more people expecting someone else to do all the work for them, relying on handouts from the government, becoming apathetic, unmotivated to work. That is very dangerous, spreading dependency rather than responsibility.