From the economic conservative

Yeah, because tax dollars are the important thing here.

Similar to other conservatives, you lied, and completely misrepresenting the true. The father is employed. However, his earnings are low enough that he receives welfare. I'm sure you'd preferred to have the children starve to death. Nice.

The father needs to be prosecuted for child abuse, spousal abuse, and, yes, welfare fraud. He knew what he was doing, insane as it appears.

thanks to the wife's willingness to birth 7 kids... the mommy and daddy got to live in cheap housing and get a ton of $. lovely isn't it. how 2 able bodied adults will birth 7 kids but won't even work in walmart to support them.

this family makes me sick. truly does.

It figures that you'd get lit up for even posting this, but it's a legitimate beef, as far as I'm concerned, and since it's a documentary about real people, your point can't be disregarded with the usual "it's only a movie, don't be wondering about real people's motivations and stuff" kind of wave-off.

I mean, for one thing, if you choose to live outside the insane culture out in the big bad world -- and there are good reasons to think that way, or at least to have serious concerns about how it's affecting your children -- it seems more than a little hypocritical to benefit from the economic machine that is one big part of all that madness outside your door. So you skim a little, figure out a way to drop out and still pay for enough food and floor space to keep you alive, and you've sort of gamed the system while being nominally against the money that makes it possible for you to do what you're doing.

So maybe it's not "the important thing" (as the first responder to your post said), in the sense of "the most important thing." But that doesn't mean it's not important at all. In fact, it does seem sort of smug in that grad-school way that so many Sundancers seem to love so much. (And before anybody starts bitching, I've actually been to Sundance, and film was one of my areas in grad school. So there.)

I agree with economic conservative, and I am a welfare social worker. TANF allows adults 60 months (Five Years) aid. However, New York, similar to California, has a 'safety net' that continues to assist children under 18 (19 if they are in High School and going to graduate) after the parents 'Time-Out'.
Since the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, there are rules wherein adults are expected to work, look for work, or 'other activities leading to work'. Getting drunk on wine is not such an activity. But I expect New York, similar to California, has so many exemptions to the work rules as to mean there really is no work rule. I do believe that no one should buy into the mainstream culture completely; you have a responsibility to think for yourself, and to earn your own way. Doing otherwise simply hands control of your life to someone else, and people with power over you will eventually exercise it against you. Societies are built on deception to keep the masses in line and violence (at least it is implied) against any dissenters. But, that does not excuse Oscar being a useless sponge. He would certainly have to work in Peru to eat, even if it is hustling white tourists as seems to be implied in the film where mom explains how she met him.
So Tubgirl, "Yeah, because tax dollars are the important thing here." Only if you pay taxes- Do you? Taxes and money taken from someone is exercising a claim on their time and life. A little bit like slavery. Oscar does not work because he believes himself better than other people (including the people paying for his bizarre beliefs). Oscar does not care about you, and I doubt he really cares about those children.
BTW the controls Oscar exercised on his wife and children is considered Domestic Abuse in social work.

The taxpayer's money spent on them is probably 0,000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of what Republicans (and Demos too) spent to finance terrorism, genocide, hate, fascism, wars and dictatorships all over the world.