'Welfare Queens' are women who get wealthy from welfare. Usually used as an argument to eliminate or 'reform' welfare because these people on welfare are supposedly 'cheating' the system.
Anecdotal Evidence
- While Conservatives say that there must be legions of these queens ripping us all off and taking our money, when it comes to actual statistics, they can't come up with anything, instead they use anecdotal evidence and inflate it to make it look like there are these vast hordes of Welfare Queens.
- The term first originated with Ronald Reagan, he didn't cite numbers, he didn't show us the statistics, he used ONE person as evidence of the 'welfare queen problem'. (1)
- Reagan was referring to Linda Taylor, and she seemed more of a fraud queen than a welfare queen.
- Other people, such as Pat Robertson, have also used "Welfare Queen", once again no statistics, just anecdotal evidence.
(1) "'Welfare Queen' Becomes Issue in Reagan Campaign", New York Times, 1976-02-15, pp. 51.
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-welfarequeen.htm
Categories: Hoaxes, Rhetoric