I think he’s talking about people that have deliberately gotten themselves so fat that they get a disability check from the government for it. I definitely have a problem with where he’s placing the blame, but he’s talking about what he sees around him.
I’m from an area similar to him, and the number of people trying to line themselves up for government assistance as their career is substantial. I think it speaks to the hopelessness of the area we live in these days, on top of generational poverty. Things have always been bad around here, but they got a lot worse after mining, and its supporting industries fell apart.
I wonder if they were using more modern fertilizer then. Being able to synthetically produce ammonia happened in 1923.