Thanks once again to The Other McCain for the Rule Five links!

Food stamp enrollment in Maine is down 22%.  Why?  Because food stamp applicants now have to work for their taxpayer largesse.  Excerpt:

(Maine Governor Paul) LePage’s administration re-implemented a work requirement for able-bodied adults without dependents enrolled in the program.

According to Maine’s DHHS, “[t]he rule required simply that those adults work for 20 hours per week, volunteer for about one hour per day, or attend a class in order to maintain food stamps beyond three months.”

Rachel Sheffield, a policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, said, “Work requirements serve to ensure that assistance is going to those most in need.”

“They act as a gatekeeper,” Sheffield said. “Welfare is available to those who truly need it, but people are directed first towards work. Able-bodied adults should be required to work, prepare for work, or look for work in exchange for receiving assistance. Maine is a strong example of promoting work and reciprocal obligation.”

Well, whattya know – Maine is following an idea put forth in the Manifesto, and it’s working.  Why?

Incentives, True Believers.  Incentives.

If government makes Free Shit easier to get and more comfortable to live on, more people will rely on Free Shit.  If they have to work for their Free Shit, then (according to the Maine example) more of them will decide that if they have to work anyway, they may well want to work for more than the government Free Shit provides.

That isn’t stopping the current crop of Democrat Presidential candidates, led by her Royal Highness Hillary I, from promising ever-more Free Shit.  But maybe – just maybe – it’s the beginning of some semblance of sanity creeping back into public discourse.  After all, it makes much more sense to measure the success of poverty-reducing programs not by how much Free Shit is handed out, but instead by the number of people who are no longer needing Free Shit.