I agree that it's wrong and was shocked when a friend brought up that's what they did and several friends chimed in "me too".

Unfortunately, tons of people in the world really don't care about wrong, they only care about what they can get away with? Their argument was "I paid the unemployment tax, I should be able to take advantage of the benefit". But I agree, the point is not to use as much as possible. It's to use as little as possible. We can't have nice things because lots of people will abuse the system.