All of these politicians in Kansas and Missouri trying to benefit-shame the poor are grandstanding. They are trying to frame benefits as a problem when benefits are really the only viable solutions to otherwise unacceptable problems. It’s like a cross border competition in the MidWest to see which side of the state line is more draconian and conservative. It’s really to divert constituents eyes from the burgeoning problems that conservative administrations created in both states.

Let’s look at this another way: should we strip government pensions from legislators who visit strip clubs? Should we limit veteran’s disability benefits because somewhere one time one veteran abused those benefits?

It’s horrendous that people think this way but it’s a natural bias outcome of our social evolution that works very well in red states for populist demagogues. The thought that somewhere someone is getting something that you are not triggers a sense of unfairness, even though you would not put yourselves in their shoes to get that something ever.

This is the essential bias at the root of the myth of the ‘welfare queen’ and ‘food stamp king’ that has little to do with skin color initially, but which is used by demagogues to also feed racial prejudices and pit urban poor versus rural poor. Nobody ever considers the essential and initial unfairness of being born in poverty, whether it be in the Appalachians or South Central L.A. Even if you are well off, every poor person you look at could have been you, whether you want to admit it or not.

Poverty looks pretty great if you’re not living in it. The government gives you free money to spend on steak and lobster, on tattoos and spa days, on — why not? — cruise vacations and psychic visits.

There’s virtually no evidence that the poor actually spend their money this way. Enough serious-minded people seem to think this is what the poor actually buy with their meager aid that we’ve now seen a raft of bills and proposed state laws to nudge them away from so much excess. Missouri wants to curtail what the poor eat with their food stamps (evidence of the problem from one state legislator: “I have seen people purchasing filet mignons”). Kansas wants to block welfare recipients from spending government money at strip clubs (in legalese: any “sexually oriented business or any retail establishment which provides adult-oriented entertainment in which performers disrobe or perform in an unclothed state for entertainment”).

Then there are the states that want to drug-test welfare recipients — the implication being that we worry the poor will convert their benefits directly into drugs.

More: The Double-Standard of Making the Poor Prove They’re Worthy of Government Benefits