Welfare State
I just got done reading a genius article on the welfare state (linked in the title), and I'd like to elaborate on the theory presented therein.
If you work hard to achieve, struggle to get what you want, and finally save and earn until your desires are satisfied, you take care of what it is that you've worked for. Phrased differently; when you have worked your ass off for something, you don't want it to go to shit.
When someone gives you something for free, and you know that more will be forthcoming regardless of your behavior, you don't give a rat's ass about it. It's not yours, you didn't have to earn it, and if you destroy it you will be given a new one.
This is why the welfare state is as terrible as it is. People are given goods, services, and money for absolutely nothing. Rather than tell them to get off their hineys and work for a change we encourage their lazy and destructive ways. We subsidize their housing (thereby artificially increasing the price of housing as well as encouraging their sloth), we subsidize their substance abuse problems (welfare), we glorify their asinine lifestyle on television, and we then act surprised when they act like children.
Morality doesn't come from threat of prison - especially when the cretins think incarceration is cool. It comes from self reliance, responsibility for ones own actions, and consequences for stupid behavior. The welfare state provides for none of these, and instead rewards the idiots who have unprotected sex at a young age and reproduce. I say CUT THEM OFF! Make them sink or swim on their own merits!
Bartleby
If you work hard to achieve, struggle to get what you want, and finally save and earn until your desires are satisfied, you take care of what it is that you've worked for. Phrased differently; when you have worked your ass off for something, you don't want it to go to shit.
When someone gives you something for free, and you know that more will be forthcoming regardless of your behavior, you don't give a rat's ass about it. It's not yours, you didn't have to earn it, and if you destroy it you will be given a new one.
This is why the welfare state is as terrible as it is. People are given goods, services, and money for absolutely nothing. Rather than tell them to get off their hineys and work for a change we encourage their lazy and destructive ways. We subsidize their housing (thereby artificially increasing the price of housing as well as encouraging their sloth), we subsidize their substance abuse problems (welfare), we glorify their asinine lifestyle on television, and we then act surprised when they act like children.
Morality doesn't come from threat of prison - especially when the cretins think incarceration is cool. It comes from self reliance, responsibility for ones own actions, and consequences for stupid behavior. The welfare state provides for none of these, and instead rewards the idiots who have unprotected sex at a young age and reproduce. I say CUT THEM OFF! Make them sink or swim on their own merits!
Bartleby
posted by Bartleby at 2:11 PM
5 Comments:
It's amazing that some people are blaming the trapped New Orleans residents on welfare, given that fewer than 40,000 people there are on welfare and far more had no transportation. From all the sources I've read, welfare to work is working and many mothers are finding Walmart and similar crappy jobs just fine. Minority americans are typically more hard-working than most white Americans would believe. The problem is that these jobs have no benefits and lousy hours, so Walmart forces taxpayers to pay for medical care and food stamps.
Colin,
For one thing, I'm not sure you understand what I mean by the welfare state. I'm not just referring to welfare and I'm not referring to blacks. I'm referring to the entitlement mindset, and that applies to corporate America, governmental America, poor America, middle-class America, and wealthy America.
Welfare to work *IS* working. I'm not complaining about that. What I'm complaining about is people waiting for government to solve their problems for them.
Let me give you a little bit of background on who *I* am.
I grew up dirt poor. I don't mean welfare poor - welfare would have paid more than my mother made, but she saw it for the trap it was. She took home about 60% of what welfare would have given her - she knew this factually because she worked for DPSS (Department of Public Social Services). I got jobs everywhere I could to get things for myself - any job...I lied about my age, took paper routes, sold candy door to door, got a lawn mower and took it door to door. We did without everything - every month the choice was food, rent, utilities - pick two.
We had no food stamps. We took no assistance. We worked our asses off. We saved. We strived. Over time, my mother got promotions. After her third (or so) promotion, she went to night school (taking the bus the majority of the time). Her job required her to be in at a certain time and the earliest bus couldn't get her there on time. Her solution? Change the clocks at work.
I personally never finished high school. Admittedly, it was to go to college early, but I have neither a degree nor a diploma to back me up in the workforce. Until I was 25, I never had a job that paid more than minimum wage plus tips. I had a thyroid problem until I was 24 that prevented me from getting anything like a decent job (it's addressed with medicine now - prior to that I slept 14-16 hours a day).
With all of that said; I do very well for myself. I won't say precisely how much I make, but I drive what I want to drive, live where I want to live, and eat what I want to eat. I have few restrictions on my lifestyle. I work with professionals.
How did I get where I am? Drive. Will. Effort. Ambition.
I got my first good job by faxing out my resume 200 times. The fax was purchased with a crappy computer I saved up for over two years.
If I can do it, anyone can do it. It requires focus, effort, and iron will. I have little pity for those who say they cannot. I have considerably more pity for those who admit they choose an easier lifestyle, but wish they had more.
Bartleby
I won't argue with how you lived. My own family worked its way up the ladder after immigrating here from South Africa and I've always worked from the time I was ten years old. Your story is harsher, but the plot is similar. I misunderstood your libertarian tendencies as the rantings of an Ayn Rand supporter, like the pissed-off welfare children I met in college. I can see that your position is far more reasonable.
There are two things I think you don't take into account. Firstly, the ladder is getting slippier. Just like Ted Turner pointed out that industry has changed the laws to make starting a new, profitable TV network impossible, industry has changed bankruptcy laws, practiced rampant predatory lending, and caused environmental illnesses in poor regions. All of these have made the modern poor climb a different ladder then before. Secondly, I'm assuming you're white. White people are offered helping hands and given the benefit of the doubt more often by the community in ways that encourage their success. This community is what government really should be, but years upon years of influence by corporations and power elites have changed the helping hand into handouts to large, influential corporations and individuals who change the face to politics in order to continue the dole.
I'm a Green and we're actually quite similar to libertarians in a number of ways. I believe that personal responsibility for society's ills is paramount and that government has a responsibility to provide a sustainable future, but that responsibility can not and should not rest upon a mythological free market. For example, government should provide public education, since it seems silly to suggest to me that Americans would have so much opportunity to advance without it. Free enterprise today is clearly too near-sighted to even think about the next decade, let alone whether our children will be able to perform the jobs when they're grown. Like farmers who won't leave their fields fallow, making every cent off the land until it's no longer fertile, industry has never understood the importance of policing itself.
I'd say that you've worked hard and done well for yourself Colin, and that it's admirable. Many people in similar situations give up.
I'm _kind of_ an Ayn Rand supporter. I believe in personal achievement, but think she's a bit whacko and extreme (as well as emotional). Her books have a lot of good things in them, but she thinks there will never be problems if the barriers are removed. I don't agree with that - there will always be problems, I just think that if the barriers are removed, there will be problems in an atmosphere that is morally right.
I'm not sure that the ladder is getting slipperier. It is only in the past few (3 or so) years that I'm making truly good money. Those advances have come from hard work. I have not had a helping hand other than unemployment when I was laid off a few years back.
The high lending rate helps people who are financially responsible. I do not accept the concept of environmental illness as being the fault of industry until I see at least strong evidence that it is such. The Erin Brockovich lawsuit used junk science to 'prove' its point, and because of it, others think that the same junk science applies to their own desires.
Unlike most libertarians, I *DO* believe in free education...through vouchers. I do NOT support the balderdash we currently have.
If free enterprise is too nearsighted these days, that's fine...let them crumble and rebuild. If they have to do that once or twice, they'll stop being so nearsighted. Farmers learned their lessons of crop rotation, and private industry will learn its lesson about investment.
Every company I've worked for since I've gotten to Indianapolis pays entirely for any related education (up to and including a degree). This has gotten more, not less, liberal, and I know of other companies that will pay for ANY education, regardless of applicability to the job currently being done.
Anyway - while it goes against the grain of everything else I believe about politics and personal responsibility, I support vouchers for education (including the first batchelor's degree).
Bartleby
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