How common are "welfare bums"?

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Marshall that's just awesome. How did you create that image? Do I smell a meme?

Yes, there is always going to be a percentage who abuse any system to their advantage. I'm resigned to this, and the fact that no government seems capable of policing benefits - relying instead on bureaucratic red-tape that, ironically, is more of a barrier to the genuinely needful. What concerns me is that the behaviour of this small percentage is used to justify vilification of the vulnerable, disabled and critically ill.

As for Ruveyn and his ilk: Would you prefer a small slice of your loaf goes to feed the hungry, or would you prefer a gang of starving outcasts to shiv you and take the lot?

I find myself agreeing with Ruveyn a lot. Are you including me in this grouping?

If you're in the faction that believes taxation is theft, that welfare is a Robin Hood style redistribution of said theft and that helping the disadvantaged is "AAAAAAAARGH! SOCIALISM!", then yes, consider yourself in that grouping.

Very well said.
It sums up my feelings on welfare as well.

That is nonsense as it is not empirically verifiable. "It IS theft" is as true as "God Exists".

This is nonsense. It is not true as you can't verify it empirically. You need to examine your system of truth, if you think this is true.

Legality is not true like the moon circles Earth.

There is no laws outside the thoughts of humans. Laws have the same status as social contracts. They are both mental constructs.
There are no actual contracts any more that there are social contracts. Contracts are not true as externally empirically verifiable nor are laws, thefts or morality.
I.e. there is no actual contracts, because the meaning of the words is not actual like an actual physical occurrence.

Again, there is no society out there. It is a mental construct like "laws, customs and protocols in order to operate". Learn truth claims!! !

I don't recall demonizing of "welfare bums" being part the libertarian platform; my experience has been more that libertarians are outraged by corporate subsidies and cronyism than personal welfare fraud.

No, not per say, but some individual libertarians believe in actual evil humans, they just call them worthless. The effect is the same, because they claim something, which is not true, just as it is not true that taxation is theft.

^
Every group has it's wingnuts, I don't think that's an excuse to demonize the whole lot based on a few individuals. Quite a few people on this forum like to misconstrue libertarianism without really understanding it, it gets annoying after a while.

Yes, I get the idea of a minimal state, I can even sympathize with it somewhat, but when we get to the "taxation is theft" I treat them like I treat any "fundamentalist" I come across. They treat something, which is subjective as if it is Objective Truth.

It's the same as the problem with Islam. The entire ideology gets lambasted because the loudest voices are the most extreme and the moderates don't criticize the extremists as much as they criticize their critics. People like ruveyn are the loudmouth mullahs issuing the crazy fatwas while moderate libertarians like you or Tequila are the ones that sit on the sidelines and only get up every once in a while to complain about "liber-phobia".

The thing is when I pay my taxes I'm not inclined to see the non-take-home portion of my income as "my money" the way everyone else seems to. I see it more like a transaction fee. Government sets up a standard of legal tender that is difficult to counterfeit and uses the transaction fees to pay for certain things that are mostly in the common interest of everyone. Arguably, tax-funded roads and infrastructure benefit the people who can profit off commerce more than the average citizen so progressive taxation isn't just a robin-hood scheme. The problem is it's hard to do an exact cost-benefit analysis when it comes to government spending because measuring externalities is difficult. Sure, there is plenty of wasteful spending, but there's also a ton of spending that goes to things that people seem to completely take for granted.

I'm also sympathetic with libertarians who argue that when government creates too much red-tape around starting a business it can be a barrier to entry. I think the real problem is the "one size fits all" approach to regulation that treats a small start-up in the exact same fashion as a massive multinational corporation that can afford to hire teams of "red tape" specialists. IMO, the answer isn't to get rid of regulation but to find a way to have different standards for small business and big business. I think this is fair and justified because when a big business screws up a heck of a lot more people are hurt than when a small business screws up.