As you probably remember from your high school psych class, Russian scientist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov is credited with developing the concept of classical conditioning – or learned response; an effective type of behavior modification. Working primarily with dogs, Pavlov demonstrated how consistent neural stimuli can lead to a conditioned response.
 
Always eager to control the masses, the progressive elites of our day have successfully replicated Pavlov’s experiments on human subjects in the form of the welfare state. Of course rather than reward good behavior (encouraging a strong work ethic and self-sufficiency) which would be contrary to their purposes, they reward bad behavior with the aim of creating a permanent underclass.
 
According to the progressive definition of “success” the food stamp program has certainly been a real “triumph;” a deviously effective means to convince the susceptible that they must depend on the government for their literal daily bread.
 
Here in Michigan we recently had two examples of just how “successful” this Pavlovian training has been. In the past several months Amanda Clayton and Leroy Fick each won the lottery – $1,000,0000 and $2,000,000 respectively – and yet neither feels any inclination to seek gainful employment, and both believe they’re still entitled to receive food stamps.*

 
Perfect. Just the kind of dependent mentality the Left looks for in a loyal Democratic voter. No surprise then that Michigan keeps getting “bluer” all the time – 1 in 5 people in the state are on food stamps!
 
That ratio is 1 in 7 nationwide, which is bad enough. The number of food stamp recipients is up 30% since Obama took office and is now costing the taxpayers some $75.3 billion annually.
 

Then there’s the potential for abuse inherent in any government give-away program. Food stamp fraud costs us about $750 million each year as Heritage’s Foundry reports:

The most common type of fraud is food-stamp trafficking where retailers encourage food-stamp recipients to trade their benefits for cash, alcohol or cigarettes (- or maybe lottery tickets?). Once the card is swiped, the merchant takes full payment for the transaction’s stated price and pockets the difference, which can add up to $50,000 a month.
 
“The crime is as widespread as it is simple: Stores accept food stamps, but instead of requiring that customers walk away with wholesome groceries, they provide the customers a small amount of cash — typically 50 cents on the food stamp dollar. While taxpayers lose out — the money isn’t going toward wholesome food — food stamp recipients are receiving no-strings attached cash while stores are taking a hefty profit for serving as a moneychanger,” according to (a) Scripps Howard report.

 
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is trying to combat the this ongoing abuse of the food stamp program. Naturally, the progressively-minded USDA is being less that helpful in the effort.
The Heritage article concludes with this:

Under the Obama administration, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in the welfare state, making individuals more dependent on government.
 
“Now, more than 67.3 million Americans depend on the federal government for everything from food stamps and college tuition to retirement services and health care,” according to Heritage’s Index of Dependence on Government, which revealed an 8.1 percent increase at a cost of roughly $2.5 trillion.

 
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I think old Doc Pavlov would be less than thrilled to learn that our government was profiting from his research for such an underhanded purpose. Indeed, although he was highly regarded by the Soviets, even garnering praise from Lenin, he made no attempts to conceal the disapproval and contempt in which he held Soviet Communism…

For example, in 1923 he claimed that we would not sacrifice even the hind leg of a frog to the type of social experiment that the regime was conducting in Russia. After the murder of Sergei Kirov in 1934, Pavlov wrote several letters to Molotov criticizing the mass persecutions which followed and asking for the reconsideration of cases pertaining to several people he knew personally.

 
Pavlov clearly was intelligent enough to understand the negative implications of behavior modification. He would have realized that using conditioned-response techniques to discourage independence and self-reliance among one’s own citizens would eventually strip them of their individual dignity.
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* A bit of common sense has prevailed here in Michigan; Clayton’s been cut from the dole and the state’s senate and house are taking steps to prevent big-payout lottery winners from collecting food stamps: Michigan Senate approves bill preventing lottery winners from getting public food assistance