When speaking to a lot of Maine people about welfare, they believe that many recipients are lazy and do not really want to work. The anger is palpable.

While it is true that some of the one-in-six people on public assistance are taking advantage and abusing the system, the number is far fewer than the one-half that voters in a recent poll believed. Those feelings are particularly strong during the current tough economic times.

Actually, Maine’s documented rate of fraud is two-tenths of 1 percent (the national rate is 4 percent). That is hardly an abundance of fraud.

In this society, most people want to be independent and are ashamed to be on the dole. A recent article in the Kennebec Journal stated that 71 percent of those on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families received benefits for a year or less.

I know from personal experience how much people dislike accepting welfare.

When I was growing up, my mother had to go on welfare; it was humiliating to her and to me. She finally went to school and earned a salary on her own. We didn’t have much, but we felt a sense of pride. If she had not had the help to allow her to get an education, we would have remained a drain on the system.

Our culture looks at people as a failure in life if they are on welfare, and most people do not want to feel as if they have failed.

Most people do not understand what welfare is. They lump many programs under that category. There is a great deal of misunderstanding, particularly during political campaigns where the candidates all say they know how to solve the welfare problem.

Among the latest misconceptions about welfare is that foreign immigrants come to Maine because of the state’s generous welfare rules and benefits. This misconception is fueled by a fear of cultures that are different.

The real fact is that, according to state data, in 2009, for example, 412 welfare cases moved out and 121 cases moved in.

Writing policy is extremely difficult, and it is very hard to make it foolproof. Maine should be complimented in this area. The state has utilized federal mechanisms to bring more capital into Maine. Let me explain further.

TANF’s annual cost is $170 million, while Maine’s share of the cost is $24.6 million. General Assistance costs statewide in 2008 were $11.5 million. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program costs $353 million; Maine’s share is $2.18 million, according to 2010 figures through August.

The other large program is Medicaid/MaineCare. In this program alone, the annual cost is $2.2 billion, but the state’s share is $555 million.

Those are large sums of money, but any entrepreneur would jump at the chance to put up $555 million and get $2.2 billion in return. These dollars then go into the state’s economic system because these dollars are spent on groceries, rent and various other living expenses, helping the Maine economy to prosper.

This use of federal dollars can also be misleading. You hear quite a lot about how Maine spends so much compared to other states, but when you look closely at these numbers, you have to see how the state is reporting. The other factor is that Maine is a rural state, a fact that causes the per-capita cost to increase.

Besides the advantages of using welfare to improve the economy, the human benefits are too many to calculate.

In the end Maine does a good job and the system, although it could be improved, is not a rip-off.

Joel Packer was executive director of Pathway Inc. He is now retired and lives in Litchfield.