Yeah.
Greed baby.
I want what you have. Along with what I have. If you have something I want…..I want it. If you have something that you didn’t have to work for, and I have to work for mine….I want it.
You are thin. I am fat. Why can’t I be like you? Irrational thought, to be sure….I could be as thin as I want to be. And that is actually the truth of it. I can be any size I want to be. As long as I am willing to do the work to do it. Being jealous of you is just stupid. A waste of your and my time.
You eat steak for dinner whenever you want. I don’t.
You make more money than I do. You have a better job. You dress better. On, and on, and on.
Greed dude. It is a poison that kills from the inside out. Turns people who kiss their children as they tuck them into bed at night into people who want to tell others what they can and cannot buy. Oh wait. Not just everyone. Just the ones who are receiving assistance.
There is the crux of it. A person pays their taxes. They have a job that they might like, or not. They live within a budget. That gives them the right to tell the people who receive assistance how to spend the money that they receive.
Because anyone can get a job, now can’t they? There are plenty of jobs out there that people can work at to support themselves. Heck. Companies are just falling all over themselves to hire people and pay them enough money so that they can live just like you and I do.
Oh wait. You seem to have a nicer car than I do.
I want it.
2 comments
Comment by Jeff Long on April 12, 2015 at 8:51 pm
As you might expect, dear cousin, I feel compelled to comment on your recent blog.
There is a difference between subsidy and sloth. Certainly there are some who need help meeting the expenses of a family; others, on the other hand, would prefer to eschew work and other means of support to suckle on the government teat. Sadly, the government is an accomplice to this attitude by making sloth more profitable that work.
Consider your maternal/my paternal grandfather. He raised eleven children aged newborn to adulthood as a single parent while working for the County. I didn’t know him much at all, but can’t imagine his preferring not working to depending on the government to support his family (if that were even an option at the time). I believe he took the responsibility of caring for his family as his own and not that of the State.
Neither your father nor mine would consider dependency on the government as a legitimate option for the care of his family. My early-widowed dad would not allow it and if I know the hard-working dad you had he would not either (not to mention your strong-willed Kraut mother!)
No, it may not be appropriate to tell those who legitimately receive government subsidy how to spend their money. On the other hand, It should be incumbent for the recipients’ own sense of pride and gratitude to spend their subsidy in a way that can’t call into question their stewardship of that subsidy by those who make it possible. They should also do all their power to extricate themselves from the quicksand that is dependency.
In conclusion, work, regardless of the level of compensation, is valuable and worthwhile; to devalue its benefits by diminishing its need the real injustice.
Comment by wormdude@gmail.com on April 12, 2015 at 9:03 pm
I don’t disagree, Jeff. What I have a problem is the “poor shaming” that seems to be raising its ugly head. Doesn’t it suck enough to have to need assistance without scrutinizing how the money is spent? Maybe we should just put a big scarlet letter of some sort on everyone in the family.