In my native Sweden, which has a much more generous social network than the US, it's clear that there are people who don't bother getting a job because they can live off unemployment. But social mobility is also higher than in the US; the correlation between income and parental income is weaker.
It boils down to the question of how many freeloaders you are willing to accept for each person that these policies help become self-sufficient. One way is to try to calculate the minimum cost to society in the long run (based on policy cost, positive contribution of those who succeed, as well as external factors such as cost of crime). Another way is to make a judgement based on moral grounds (either that people should not be given handouts by society or that it is morally wrong to have people living in poverty.)
A few days later you'll get a summons for small claims court indicating that you owe their brother-in-law who is a part-time mechanic $750 to fix the dents "right".
Does this guy not watch Judge Judy?
Wash them all but two.
Go there a couple hours later and see what happened.
That would only be a sample of one though. The experiment may be worth just to make you realize how powerful the mixture of gratitude, self-hate, the willingness to help oneself, greediness and generosity is.
Do the remaining two pans and glass get cleaned by anyone else?
Of course not; they are the base dishes that we pile everything else on top of that day.
Why clean the remaining two dishes, there was originally an entire sink full of them! Comparatively, it's almost spotless!
The question is, does the fact that I have fewer dents in my car make me more likely to fix the others? If someone comes along and does almost all of my dishes for me, am I more likely to wash the last few myself?
I believe the answer to that is not, as Bennett suggests, "Yes."
If someone comes along and fixes most of my car for me, or cleans most of my dishes, when I had no inclination of doing it myself, why would I stop them? If someone is going to come and fix my problems for me, why do it myself? All you have to do is wait long enough, and, like magic it's done for you!
So while it is an interesting theory, the problem is, people become set in their habits fairly quickly. If I do not wash my dishes one day, I am not really more inclined to wash them the next. Indeed, why should I? There is suddenly an almost empty sink in which to store the dirty ones.