How long before a 'temporary' setback becomes a 'way of life'?

I do indeed feel the pain of those who have lost their jobs - their homes, their cars, and yes - even their families. 

But as I drive down the major highway (not freeway)  in my city everyday, I see 'Help Wanted' and 'Now Hiring' signs in the windows of restaurants, retail chain stores, auto repair shops, and even a very classy automobile dealership begging for salesmen. 

These signs give me pause for thought. After a man or woman has been out of work for a couple of years and the gob'mint just keeps extending unemployment checks and months roll into years -- when does that gob'mint subsistence and subsidy become a way of life?

When food stamps are replaced with credit card looking pieces of plastic, rent subsidies are made electronically, and unemployment is applied for over the Internet and none of those old fashioned weekly or monthly visits with a job counselor are needed to sustain the flow, what then?

At what point does a formerly solid citizen and family provider just say, 'Screw it" and start watching Judge Judy in the afternoon instead of knocking on doors. How far down the path does s/he go - before doctor shopping to find a 'disability' free chit for life merely by asking Social Security?

Kids will be be fed two squares a day - that just means one Happy meal at dinner time. 

I watched this happen in Europe twenty and thirty years ago..... when it became an easier life to just give up on aiming higher and start taking what is available from the largess of your slogging working neighbor who fights the traffic and the rat race each day. And pays his taxes.

Last question - What happens when the gob'mint runs out of money ..... (as it is doing) and we find that millions of folks have forgotten how to work for a living?

What then?

I have read that one of the aims of the Dimmocrats is to create a voting majority of 'takers' to ensure the Party's re-election forever.  The rich will still drive limos, the power elite will be at the head of the line - but what happens when America loses it's middle class and there is nobody to pay the bills. Greece?  Spain?  France? England?

Russia and China have no poverty riots for a simple reason ---- they don't allow them!!