Welfare's false compassion

The Wall Street Journal:

Emma Sussock, an unemployed single mother in Liverpool, in northwest England, claims about £120 ($173) a week in various benefit payments plus free housing from the government. The 21-year-old's mother hasn't worked in more than 20 years and last attended a job interview five years ago. Ms. Sussock's step-grandfather has been receiving incapacity benefits since suffering a heart attack more than 20 years ago.

Many of the people she knew growing up were welfare claimants, and she wasn't spurred to work at school or look for a career. She says has worked just one day, behind a nightclub's bar, since leaving school at 16.

...Ms. Sussock, who says she last took a vacation trip when she was 10 years old, says she thinks the government's pitch [to reduce welfare rolls] is a good idea and wishes she had been more motivated herself.

"I don't want to be on benefits," she said. "I want a good house and to take [my daughter] on holiday."

How can such a system in any way be confused with compassion? Who is really working in the best interest of the poor here -- those who want to perpetuate such a system or those seeking to end it?