In Uncle Sam's Plantation, Star Parker speaks from experience about the welfare system. She categorizes herself as once being part of the lazy poor when she discovered as a teenager in 1980 that with a pregnancy confirmation note from a California doctor she would receive $465 a month plus $176 in food stamps and 100% free medical and dental assistance. To qualify she couldn't have a bank account, a job or be married. To her it seemed like a great deal. She also managed to sell the medical "stickers" on the black market and live an adequate life (she previously had 4 abortions all paid for by the government).
In Uncle Sam's Plantation she likens our current system to slavery - a developed and sophisticated poverty plantation operated by the federal government. This provides a government safety net for bad choices rather than natural consequences taking effect. People have been assured that there are political remedies for their dilemma and society will help them. Even the minimum wage increases caused more unemployment and problems in poor areas. This mostly affects small businesses who cannot afford to pay higher wages and as a result raise their prices, making them less competitive, and laying people off.
She shows there are three types of poor Americans:
Weary Poor: They think their situation is simply bad luck and don't have the confidence to make life better.
Hopeful Poor: They work hard and stick to a budget and although they have very little, they are content.
Lazy Poor: Who equate being on welfare to winning the lottery
She shows in a swimming pool analogy that the welfare system is as ludicrous as it would be to have a swimming pool with a deep end and shallow end and saying it is unfair for those who can't swim to not be able to use the deep end and those in the deep end have unfair privileges.
