Why are the working class and poor portrayed as parasites?

[Eagle_Syr]

Obviously, bourgeois media...but this "welfare state" propaganda has even made proletarians look at themselves in a negative light, even feel guilty.

This culture that promotes getting rich off of the labor of others is problematic and must be fought. People are actually happy and proud to get to a point where everybody else does the work, manages the business, and they get to do nothing and reap the profit.

[RedSonRising]

This is one of the major problems in terms of organizing for the working poor and popularizing ideas that reveal the proletariat as disempowered, rather than spoiled or privelaged. As you say, it works perfectly into the narrative of ruling class ideology, and this has been going on since the very beginning of relief houses in the US as well. The working class, particularly blacks, were constantly portrayed as promiscuous, lazy, etc., and work-welfare as a form of seasonal cheap labor was kept as a regulating institution funded by local industrialists to suit their needs. The best way to disrupt this myth is to counter with cold hard facts; most welfare recipients are non-urban whites, most people on welfare have to work very hard and even participate in the informal economy (many times turning to hustling, crime, etc.) because not even minimum wage jobs can afford basic utilities and rent with standard working hours. It's not the vacation most people think it is. Those "leeching" on the system are in the minority. One clip I enjoy in particular for dispelling these myths is the Jon Stewart skit mocking Fox's outrage at the poor having basic household appliances.

[Lynx]

It's propaganda designed to get you to place blame on others, or on yourself, and not on the system.

[KurtFF8]

Obviously, bourgeois media...but this "welfare state" propaganda has even made proletarians look at themselves in a negative light, even feel guilty.

This culture that promotes getting rich off of the labor of others is problematic and must be fought. People are actually happy and proud to get to a point where everybody else does the work, manages the business, and they get to do nothing and reap the profit.

Well aside from the more "obvious" aspects of bourgeois ideology's "goal" (if ideology can have a goal) of class struggle and maintain class rule, there is also the tradition of "charity" or philanthropy that goes into this portrayal.

If we look at the early-mid industrial era of Capital in places like the US, we see many societies and movements (like temperance for example) where more bourgeois elements of society would try to "tame" or "help" the working poor sections of cities and bring them "civilization and morals." Part of this requires a construction of workers as untamed, needing of help, etc.