I agree it's kind of bothersome to see this kind of profound dependence on "the system", but there are some things to consider... being 600-700 pounds is not exactly something a person ASPIRES to. Think about that. There's not a lot of money or other benefits to be gained by becoming disabled early in life; most of the time, the amount received is not enough to live an acceptable life, much less a comfortable one.
My brother worked until he was about 24, and was then diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder. He has been on SSDI ever since, but gets less than $800 a month and can't get approved for either Medicaid or food stamps. He pays his Medicare premiums out of his check, and still has to pay co-pays or co-insurance for anything he has to see a doctor for. It's a HARD life, living on so little.
Being that massively heavy would make life hard even if you had plenty of money to spend on the food you like to eat or comfortable places to lie around or whatever. Would YOU choose to do that? I'm in the middle of a weight loss journey of my own, and have lost nearly 100 pounds in less than six months without surgery, but even so, at less than half what these folks weigh, I have a LOT of pain, in my neck, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles. Carrying extra weight feels terrible. You don't breathe well, you have a hard time getting up from bed or a chair, you tend to hate leaving the house because of people staring at you, laughing at you, or catcalling you when you're trying to do things right for yourself. And working at home? Sure, worth a try. Have you ever tried doing ANY kind of work when you're at least 500 pounds heavier than the average person? Every movement, every hour spent sitting at a computer, every phone conversation you have to have with a customer or employer would be EXHAUSTING. At my heaviest (still far less than these people), sitting at a desk at work for 8 hours a day was pure hell. And you can't do anything FAST enough to satisfy your employer. Put on the fat-suit before you make any kind of judgments about what another person is able to do. And yes, anyone can acknowledge that nobody gets to 600 pounds without making a LOT of bad choices. I would never deny that. A lot of bad choices got me to where I was too. But there are other considerations, like the kind of eating habits you developed as a child, and that's 100% on your parents. That stuff bleeds over into adulthood. And there are going to be people who enable you to behave badly in your adulthood. You are responsible for your choices, but a whole lot of that comes from forces outside your control. It's really easy to say "I would NEVER allow myself to get that big." Do you think these people never said that to themselves? Look at them. Not a single person on that show is happy when they start their journey, and many of them aren't happy even after they've lost a few hundred pounds. Something contributed to that, and it wasn't dietary choices.
"Free" money isn't free, not to the taxpayers that provide it, and not to the people receiving it. My brother says he would love to be able to hold down a job, but he simply CAN'T. The whole problem with this world, and with this country, especially, is that there's not enough COMPASSION for our fellow human beings. You may think you know these people as being big fat piles of crap, but you only get the part of the story that TLC chooses for you to know. We ALL have problems and need to just get over ourselves and stop being so judgmental.
