Well, she has a small daughter and finding/paying for child care is difficult - spending much time with her while waiting tables and writing would have probably have been impossible.

There's a right-wing caricature of the benefit-parasite; some slob who sits on a porch drinking beer at the expense of his fellow citizens.

Those people exist, of course. But there are also auto workers in Detroit whose entire local economy got moved to China. Iraq veterans who got their legs blown off. People of sub-normal intelligence who simply cannot organise their own lives. And arty, talented people who spend ages settling on a job they want to do - but when they find it, they do it well.

Sifting the porch-dwellers from these types of benefit seekers is a difficult job that may incur costs that outweigh the eventual savings.