EI, Social Insurance, free-loading and living simply

Here is a comment I saw on someone's blog that doesn't totally agree with me:

Laura Says:
May 12th, 2006 at 08:45 am
I don’t know if I’m on the same wavelength here, but according to the first quote, I seem to be an anomoly. Even my parents recently thought that. My mother, after asking what I did that day, and I told her I went to the beach & walked around, birdwatched, etc., said, “There is something wrong with this picture, it is like you are already retired, and your dad & I are still out working.” That is right because I am on Income Assistance and after spending some time on the computer in the morning job searching, I then spend the rest of the day doing what I like. In order for the government to know that I am not just sitting on my ass for the rest of the day, quite a few days I spend volunteering (usually with the Van. Aquarium, which is where I am heading in a few moments). Volunteering does look good on a resume (better than stating “good at sitting on my ass”, however, now that I think of it, if I want an office job, sitting on my ass would be a good skill!). Anyway, I’m not one of those people who are stuck in a maze. The only thing wrong or bad about my situation is that I cannot afford quite a few of the things I want. But I seem to be able to get this far in life without my wants, so that’s not such a bad thing. Anyway, need to run!

This isn't what I call living simply or whatever, it's living while taking advantage of the system. I mean, perhaps this person really needed EI or soscial assistance for a while, because she was phisically sick, truly couldn't find work, was depressed or had some other predicament that prevented her from naking her own money. And this is fine. I am absolutely for a social safety net. I just hope that it will still be there for me if or when I need it! I just know several people in my circle of friends who are perfectly capable of working, perfectly capable of finding a decent job, but refuse to, claiming that they don't to work for a big corporation, or they only want to do a certain type of work that is suppositively 'good for society', or for the 'environment'. They'd rather sit on their asses 60% of the year, playing video games on their computers, and sometimes going skiing. That is where I can't support their ethical views. How sitting on your ass six months out of the year, eating up other people's social insurance, staying in a certain type of town JUST so you CAN receive EI, ethical? Not pulling your weight is definitely not environmentally friendly if you want my opinion. Why? Simple, you're not putting in as much as your taking out, and so others have to do it for you, these other people work more because they pay taxes for you to suck out of their paycheck, then there's more harcore people who have a great disdain for people like you who want the system to cut down social securities, and so people in general work more by fear of not being supported by the system, while you just sit.