It is my opinion that you will always have a certain percentage of people who will work the system, not plan for their own future, and take any excuse they can find for those choices.  I am not sure there is anything that would motivate them to do better, strive for a better future, or think beyond the moment.

....

It seems built in.   Any societal systems that address writing government checks to individuals should take this into consideration.

Who is this Becky?  You think just like me.

It's evolutionary. There are genes that run through the human race where people have learned to survive on the margins of society and they will always be with us, because in times of acute crisis it is often these people who more successfully pass on their DNA to future generations.  There's a human "gene" that has you surviving by gaming the more prosperous parts of society, and there's no reason it would go away, just like some animals eat carrion that some other animal took the trouble to kill. As long as some animals do the work of killing, there will be others to take advantage of this to steal a free meal.

But we mustn't admit this in humans, no no, it's RACIST. (Although it exists across all races.)  For some reason we're to pretend homo sapiens sapiens is exempt from this kind of natural selection, so no, we will never take this into consideration.

But we should.  I believe in charity. I've given a lot of money directly to those in need for whatever reason.  Maybe they gave me a charming smile. Maybe they convinced me with brochures. I've no problem with people "gaming" me or society in this way.  My problem is when a government forcibly takes my money, takes a huge chunk for themselves, and gives the rest to people not of my choosing.  That's when this inherent trait becomes encouraged and grows to malignant size, until it sucks the life out of the whole economy.

Strange euphoria setting in ... a president who loves America, is smart, listens, responds, actually works hard on our behalf. Picks highly qualified people, thinks Constitution is important.

I've got a "strange euphoria" this January.  Complete opposite of my normal post-holiday depression.  Maybe it's due to big, sunny, warm south Texas instead of cold, grey Appalachia.  Maybe it's that our finances are finally turning around. Maybe it's the Grandbaby.  Nah. It's none of that.   

I'm a lukewarm supporter. I didn't vote for him in the primary but did in the general of course, because this country cannot survive Hillary, she'd just continue the Obama slide into oblivion.

I am more hopeful about him now that he's been elected; he is becoming more "presidential" (less insane?).  But I understood all along that his extremist rants, like deporting all illegals and killing the families of terrorists, were designed to gain attention, and hence actually successfully win the election, more than literal promises he'd fulfill.  I had no problem with that.  It certainly wasn't as down and dirty and duplicitous as some of the things Hillary's campaign did.

I still have reservations about exactly how he is going to achieve the goal of bringing jobs back to the U.S.  Setting tariffs against imports for example would be the wrong way to do it. This would raise consumer prices, which has always been my beef with U.S. workers demanding the jobs stay home. They want union wages, and minimum wage laws, and the Feds set regulations about safety, environment, etc., plus high taxes, all the costs of which, naturally, manufacturers just pass along to the consumer.  To restrict imports as a way to force goods to be made on our soil, without addressing these reasons the jobs went overseas in the first place, will be disaster for the consumer's pocketbook.

And we need cheap, abundant energy. Trump needs to put an end to this movement to destroy fossil fuel.  Fuel cost impacts every single thing we buy, use, eat or do.  Perhaps no other single item is as important for him to do than to reverse what the left has done to destroy good energy in this country; closing coal plants, killing the nuclear industry, banning offshore drilling, subsidizing "green" energy so the masses do not understand how expensive and inefficient it actually is. Trump understands this but I don't know if he can fight the uphill battle of climate change hysteria.

I guess what I don't want to see is some kind of heavy handed dictatorship methods, the thing the liberals seem to think is a foregone conclusion with Trump. He's basically Hitler, you know, according to them.  Well he isn't. But like Obama, he could abuse executive powers and I'm a little wary of that. And he will have a major influence on the country for generations with the SC nominations. Trump is not going to outlaw gay marriage or any of the other stuff the snowflakes and crybabies are all panicked about. But who ends up on the SC will have an impact on these issues, and being libertarian, I'm more a social liberal, so I'm wary of that.  But I feel that economic collectivism must be avoided at ALL costs, and trumps social freedoms by a huge margin. So I fervently hope the SC positions are filled by anyone but a leftist.

Trump is not an ideologue. (This is why some on the Republican right reject him.) I guess my preference would have been a libertarian ideologue in a perfect world. But Trump is a businessman who will negotiate or bend, or change position as needed to accomplish his goal.  This is why I'm wary of him, and only a lukewarm supporter. His flip flop on some gun rights issues for example.  But, it might turn out to be a good thing because there's nothing more dangerous than a rigid thinking ideologue, on any end of the spectrum.  Those are the types who will keep a utopian ideal in mind while people around them suffer.  A pragmatic businessman on the other hand, will see the reality of the journey to the goal as well as the goal itself, and will see the nuances, variations, compromises along the way, that need to be managed to actually make the good thing happen.

For example, I expect Trump to flip flop on immigration when he sees that although Americans SAY they want the jobs that the illegals are taking, in reality they won't actually take them unless they get a high wage, which of course, means high prices for the consumer, and of course, those same Americans will then bitch about high prices.

But immigration is a touchy subject, and the real problem is cultural. When a people invade a land not to assimilate, but to replace that land's culture with their own, in the end, that country will cease to exist. This is the heart of the "nationalism" that Trump tapped into during the campaign.  Trump voters want to keep America America - no, NOT to go back to slavery - but to retain a culture supportive of free enterprise, prosperity, relative safety, and relative freedom from government molestation, that the immigrants from the century before last sought when they came through Ellis Isle. 

How Trump will reconcile these forces to result in a country with good employment, low prices, increasing wealth for the middle class, declining poverty, and a reasonable immigration policy that welcomes the hardworking, law abiding applicant who wants to actually become an American, regardless of skin color or ethnicity, remains to be seen.

I am guardedly optimistic.

The divide is mostly urban vs rural.  I am coming to the realization that it's cultural more than ideological. The urban culture has become completely disconnected from people that live closer to the earth and in small communities. Paradoxically they claim to care about the planet, but they are now generations away from having to grow their own food. They don't actually have a relationship with nature yet they see themselves as protectors of their ideal vision of "the environment" (a vision based in fantasy).  They do not supply their own energy, it comes to them over wires and they barely have any understanding of how it gets there. They feel superior to "country hicks" and "rednecks" and with every generation the separation becomes wider. The overwhelming majority of people have barely any understanding of the economy, couldn't give you a definition of "socialism" if their lives depended on it. They vote Democrat simply because they are surrounded by others who vote that way, and are steeped in media that paints conservatives as the Face of Evil.

This country is in reality a huge red mass with small spots of blue, but the small spots are so densely populated, and so ignorant of the people in the red areas, that they exist in a seething self important bubble. The big shock of the Trump win is that they were forced to recognize that real people exist in that empty "flyover country". These inferior "rednecks" forced them to take notice by denying them the assumed first female President. It's just taking a toy from a toddler is all. I'm convinced that the great majority of rioters and cry babies have no real clue about the policy differences between Trump and Hillary, they are simply shocked that people they so look down upon were able to take away their expected result.  I don't even think they give a crap about Hillary.  Their real problem is they feel like a parent swooped in and took something away from them, and that parent is the horrible, racist, unenlightened stupid person they have, until now, forgot existed. The cities don't like being reminded we exist because without us, they have no food and no energy. This is their deep subconscious fear. Their hatred of us is due to their dependence on us.  Like a toddler resenting his dependence on mommy and daddy. But it's worse. It's more like masters who depend on slaves to work the plantation, or royalty in a medieval castle who have serfs that must turn over a large portion of their crops and goods. They are most comfortable pretending we don't exist, as long as they get their food and energy (and tax dollars).  You can expect extreme efforts to overthrow the Electoral College, because the EC is what gives us large red areas power.

There is no possible way to divide the country. It will be the Big House with no fields or woods. The Castle with no hunting lands or tenants.  The blue areas cannot separate and survive, even the blue states are mostly red when you look at it by county.  For a long time now the trend has been for the population to move from rural to urban and as far as I can see, that imbalance will continue to grow.  That may mean if Republicans continue to win by EC, the popular vote will go the other way more often, until even the EC won't be enough for Republican wins.  As people move to the cities, their children are "absorbed" into the urban culture.

So I expect this nation will go Democrat again before long. If we're lucky we'll have eight years of Trump and an economic boom, but it will all be reversed again because Democrats don't grasp economics. They don't see the connection between lower taxes and individual prosperity; they vote on emotion and "causes" not based in fact and reality.  We'll eventually decline into socialist Hell and probably break apart into fiefdoms, or be forced to stay together like the Soviet Union.

The Democrat elite look down upon most of the country, except those that can donate, and/or live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and places like that.

I'll throw in many of the Republicans.  It's the DC insiders. They are SO out of touch.

I agree with both of you Gary and Anthony. I voted for Rubio in the primary. I think Trump is likely a narcissist.  But I think Hillary is a narcissist and a sociopath. Trump is just a garden variety pig. Hillary is dangerous.

The way Kaine kept interrupting Pence right from the start was one of the rudest, nastiest excuses for "debating" I have ever had the mispleasure of seeing. That guy is a piece of shit.

I listened to that entire speech. Donald Trump was talking about ideological profiling and he went on to make that very plain. He was talking about finding out whether a refugee or would-immigrant had any signs of extremist leanings, any history or evidence of association with known terrorist organizations or sympathies with their cause.  He made this VERY plain. To say he was advocating profiling based on race is an outright lie.