“The depth and length of this recession is at risk of creating a permanent pool of unemployed Americans, who get so used to being unproductive that they are willing to accept welfare indefinitely instead of taking a job.”

This is called the Fundamental Attributional Error, in which individuals are seen as responsible (due to their personal failings, e.g. ‘lack of discipline’) for a situational or systemic problem.

Conservatives frequently blame individuals as a way of minimizing problems at hand, or to misdirect. The problem isn’t that the unemployed have sub-par dispositions. It’s that they’re unemployed. See the misdirection? It hides the fact that Newt Gingrich has a sub-par disposition.

via Keith Olbermann exposes Newt Gingrich as the true welfare queen | Crooks and Liars.

(see Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect for more on dispositional vs situational vs systemic causation)