Your notion that being unforgiving to honest, hard-working people leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

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As someone who has taken unemployment benefits, and gone through the goddamn ringer on keeping up with their demands while learning to take advantage of the wealth of job-finding resources they had to offer, I can say that it's no easy ride for free money. There's no slacking and avoiding an active daily job search unless you commit fraud. They audit your claims to a certain extent to look for fraud.

I'm not saying people don't abuse the system. I'm certain they do.

I'm saying, in my personal experience, limited though it is, that office was filled with people using the computers and waiting in line for personal meetings with employment workers. It was a room of strained hope and desperate smiles. It was full of people trying their damndest to get back into the system, not people slacking on a free dime.

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Without data to put this into perspective, we're just sharing anecdotes.

Here's the first 3 links on googling the phrase, "what percent of welfare is abused"
Huffington Post
ThinkProgress
wikipedia

Looks like that abuse of the system you describe amounts to ~2% of all welfare transactions.

Those economic powers can change in ways that leave a person or a region of people on the losing end of the stick. They are perfectly willing to retrain and find a new job, but they need to feed their kids while they take a few weeks to do so.

What I hope I've illustrated is how welfare does provide a safety net - one that compliments the free market.