“Democrats Target Wealth Gap and Hope Not to Hit Economy”

That was the title of a frontpage story in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, November 22nd.  The gist of the article is that the gap between the wealthy and the poor in America has been widening over the last 20 years (which I concede is true), and that Democrats – having won the house and senate in the recent election – are now in a place where they can (and intend to) do something about it (which can be a good thing, if done well).  The Dems’ plans to fix the gap (many of them potential plans, not likely to become realities) include but not limited to the following (according to the article). 

I thought these topics might be interesting to discuss, even though some have already gotten some air time here…

  1. Raise the minimum wage.  I can’t really argue witht his, since it’s SO low ($5.15), and hasn’t been changed in 20 years, while inflation has increased the cost of everyday goods by about 25% in that time.  I have no real beef with this approach, though I agree with the WSJ that this will do little to actually close the gap between the salaries of CEO’s and the salaries of dock workers (for example).  An increase in the earned income tax credit would be another option to which I wouldn’t necessarily be apposed, and is on the agenda of many democratic lawmakers going into January.  However, I have to admit that I haven’t spent much time thinking about the implications of an increased EITC.
  2. Limit the amount people can earn.  This effectively boils down to instituting a “maximum wage”, similar to the minimum wage, but on the other end.  This is straight off the Marxist “redistribute the wealth” page of the San Francisco values handbook, and would be a disaster.  Not only would this work toward crippling the economy by undermining the incentive to succeed, but is an afront to freedom and capitalism.  Really really really bad idea (in my opinion), but some libs love it. 
  3. Institute a windfall profit tax.  If you make too much, then you get exorbitantly taxed for it on top of standard income tax.  See my objections in #2.
  4. Lower the cutoff for the death tax.  This would undo recent legislation that increased the cutoff (from $650k to $3.5M) for paying estate tax (also affectionately called the “death tax”).  The percentage of the tax has also dropped from 55% to 47% in recent years, and this change would potentially roll that back as well.  These were key components of the infamous “tax cuts for the rich”, which we’ve talked about and which gets a lot of air time in liberal circles.  Summary from my perspective:  I think the estate tax is morally wrong and punishes people for having accumulated in life – and at that, does so a second time (because it’s taking half of what they managed to accumulate after having paid all manor of taxes on what they earned, spent, lived in, bought, talked on, used to heat their homes, breathed, etc).  I am *not* a big fan of second generation wealth, and have seen up close the disaster that people who get a lot for little work can make of their lives.  However, this is not the solution to that.  Freedom has some challenging by-products (a statement I know most liberals would accept and agree to), and I feel this is just one of them.  It takes something really really wrong like the death tax to address it, so we just need to live with it.
  5. Strengthening labor unions.  The goal here would be to give the labor unions more power, so that they can avoid being stepped on by management.  As I’ve said before, I think it’s unfortunate that labor unions are even necessary, but they are.  If management was more generous and considerate and supportive of their workers, we wouldn’t have many of the problems we have in the marketplace.  My fear is that workers with more powerful unions would use this power to “stick it to the man”.  Like much of what passes these days for the search for “racial equality”, I fear this will translate to “revenge” instead of stopping at “equality”.  I guess I have a “can’t we all just get along” attitude here, which I know is unrealistic.  So, in the final analysis, I support strong labor unions.  They’re something management will just have to live with.  Mostly, they brought it on themselves.  For what little good it will do, I would call on both sides to be reasonable.
  6. Raise the income tax brackets.  This just ticks me off.  Where’s the end of this?  So called “wealthy” Americans are already shouldering an enormous percentage of the tax burden in America.  At what point do you begin to break the back of the machine that’s creating all the jobs and wealth and opportunity for the lower- and middle class?  People think that when the Democrats talk about “tax cuts for the rich”, they’re only talking about billionaires.  Not hardly.  If you make $100k a year (putting you in the bracket 2nd from the top), you’re paying 22% of your salary to federal income tax alone, then about 3% to state, then 6.2% to social security, then 1.5% to medicare.  Totally forgetting about property tax, the 30% tax on your cell phone, exhorbinant taxes on all your utilities, and on and on and on and on, that’s a total of almost exactly one-third of your salary down the black whole of income taxes (before we even get started on all the other taxes).  And the Dems are saying that’s not enough.  If you make $250k / year (putting you $80k into the top bracket … right in the sweet spot for the small business owner, employing 6-10 lower- to middle class workers), you’re getting close to 40% just to income tax (plus another 6.2% for social security, unemployment, and a bunch of other taxes) for every employee in your company.  This not already an unbelievable strain on the people creating the jobs.  How is raising tax brackets going to make that betterYes, it would create more tax revenue in the short run, but would be one more stone around the economy’s neck in the long run.  What will make these people happy?  Jack the top bracket up to 70% like it was before Reagan cut it in ’81?  Btw, just for the sake of reference, the guy making $10M a year pays 44% income tax, only 4% more than the small business owner paying 40%, who’s also in the top bracket.  If you want to add another bracket to the top at say $500 and up, great.  Then I can get on board calling that a tax for the rich.  But the current definition of “the rich” gets all the way down to the guy making $94k/yr at the bottom of bracket 2 – not exactly the exobitantly wealthy.  (Interested in playing with a tax bracket calculator, here’s a good one.)
  7. Raise the dividend tax rate.  Lowered to 15% by Bush’s tax cuts (“for the rich”), this played an enormous role in rehabilitating our economy after the tech bubble crash, 9/11, and the various Enron-et-al scandals.  Now, the Dems want to role it back, because I guess they feel creating more capital for business expansion (which generates wealth and creates jobs) is a bad thing.  Actually, that’s unfair.  What they really want is more equity (admirable, if unrealistic at the level they’re thinking), but I believe that they fail to see that having this rate low so that businesses can grow and expand dramatically helps the lower- and middle class.  More jobs and more assets are good, right?  Like #6, this has short term benefits, but constitutes a serious long-term liability – in my opinion.
  8. Collect unpaid taxes.  I’m all over this one.  If someone owes taxes, they should pay them.  If they don’t, they should be penalized.  If we just had a more effective system for collecting taxes (*cough* simplify! *cough* flat tax! *cough*), then we could generate quite a bit of extra revenue just by collecting what’s already due the government.  (Btw, we had a lively debate about taxes a while back that might interest you.)
  9. Increase the ceiling for social security.  This year, you pay social security only on your first $94k of income.  It already goes up every year.  It feels like such a short-term, short-sighted solution to the social security solvency problem, but yes, I guess we could raise those limits even faster and bring in more money.  Yes, this punishes Bill Gates, but it also punishes the same small business owner we’ve been talking about in the last few paragraphs.  And while we’re on the topic, why *should* Bill Gates be punished?  The poor guy we’re “robbing the rich” for?  How many jobs has he created?  How many companies has he built?  Do we really believe that Bill Gates is exorbitantly wealthy because he lucked out, not because he had amazing ideas, was craftier than others, took huge risks, worked himself half to death, AND was lucky?  Just seems wrong to punish people like him for their success.  America is the only country on earth where a person can drop out of high school, build something amazing in their garage, and parlay that into a $100 billion empire.  Why does that somehow intrinsically give us the right to take whatever we want from him, just because he has money?  I agree he should shoulder a significant burden, but don’t you think he already does?  (Also, feel free to join the social security debate from a last week.)
  10. Universal health care.  I’m not sure I even want to get into this (okay I’m sure, and I don’t – this is already a long post).  Suffice it to say, from my perspective, if this passes, you’ll pay more for something “free” than you have for almost anything else in your life.  I can’t even imagine the tax increases that would be required to even begin to cover this – double all the income tax brackets, maybe?  Makes me sweat just thinking about it.  (Here’s a very interesting analysis of the pros and cons of universal health care.)

Here’s a free-radical kind of thought…  It really gets under my skin that many of the liberals calling for sweeping economic reform – including much of the “rob the rich to feed the poor” legislation – are extremely wealthy themselves, and are well-known to have much of their personal wealth in off-shore bank accounts, outside the reach of taxes.  The Kennedy’s, George Soros, and others.

In addition to all this, I found the following interesting.  Quoting the article…

“Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat in line to chair the House Financial Services Commitee, vows to push legislation that would force companies to provide more and clearer details of CEO pay, devise policies to recapture incentive pay if earnings are later restated, and require shareholder approval of ‘golden parachute’ payments to dismissed executives.”

To sum it up, Frank asks the question, “How do you do a better job of sharing overall economic growth with the average worker?”  I’m not necessarily apposed to any of the three things for which he’s pushing in the above paragraph, but this “fundamental question” smacks way too much of “it’s the government’s responsibility to provide” for my taste.  For the 100th time, I’m way more comfortable with having the government provide freedom and equal opportunity, so that people determine their own standing in society through their hard work, smarts, and ambition.  Legislating “fairness” will never be achieved, and in my opinion we risk destroying the country in the process.  So, let’s minimize (not eliminate) the legislation of fairness, and try to get out of the way of peoples’ entrepreneurial drive as much as possible.

Some of the dems’ proposals in this article do that, some really don’t.  But it’s that question I use to draw the lines around what I like and don’t like in their plans.

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Book Report: Culture Warrior by Bill O’Reilly

I’ve decided to start posting book reports – my thoughts and feelings about books I’ve read recently.  I’ll warn you though.  I’m a slow reader (I have bad eyes), so these may be infrequent.  For the most part, I oughta be a founding member of the Book on CD club.  And now that I spend more time commuting, maybe I’ll up my averages.  We’ll see how things come out in the wash.

First book review, “Culture Warrior”…

Book: Culture Warrior
Author:  Bill O’Reilly
Topic:  The Culture War in America

Bill O’Reilly believes (and so do I) that there is a war raging in the United States to define the prevailing value system in our country. 

On the one side there are “traditionalists”.   Traditionalists typically feel that the United States is a noble country that is well-founded, is predominately good, and is an overwhelmingly positive influence in the world.  By and large, they like things in America the way they’ve been for a long time, and advocate maintaining more traditional ways.  This group is trypically religious (in a traditional sense – many Christians and Jews), typically deeply respects the military, consider themselves to be “salt of the earth”, want the government to leave them alone to succeed, and are mostly conservative in their political persuasion – both socially and economically. 

On the other side there are “secular progressives”.  SP’s (as O’Reilly calls them) typically feel that the US is a misguided country that has gone off the rails.  They would be inclined to use words like “imperialist” and “oppressive” to describe the country, and feel that many of the world’s ills are America’s fault.  For the most part, they desire broad, sweeping social and economic change.  This group is also religious (but in the more-modern sense of worshipping tolerance and no-exceptions-privacy and other progressive concepts – little use for God, a lot of use for rights and what people deserve).  They typically feel the military is corrupt – even unnecessary in today’s age of global community – and should be dramatically downsized, consider themselves “enlightened”, want the government to be expanded so that it can provide them with equality and success, look forward to a world government/community, and are mostly liberal in their political persuasion.  Bill descibes what SP’s believe as “San Francisco Values“.

Both groups would claim that they represent the way America should be.  Both would claim the “correct” interpretation of the founding fathers’ intetions, with one significant difference.  Traditionalists would want to change very little about the conventional wisdom on this interpretation, where SP’s would claim that we’ve interpetted them wrongly all along.  For instance, the traditionalist would interpret the religious freedom clause in the 1st ammendment to mean that the government should not impose itself on the religious practice of its citizens.  SP’s believe that there is a wall of separation between church and state that forbids any public expression of religious.  Exactly opposing views. 

Another example…  Traditionalists would interpret the 2nd ammendment to mean that the average citizen has the right to keep the government in check by bearing arms – a fundamental distrust of government and the power it could have over the average person.  SP’s believe that guns are bad and should be outlawed, that government is good and should be trusted, that the 2nd ammendment was poorly conceived and should be overturned. 

Last example…  Traditionalists believe that the government has an obligation to provide freedom and opportunity, but that success and prosperity comes from the hard work of the individual – that the individual is responsible for himself.  SP’s believe that the government has an obligation to actually provide success and prosperity (this is the only fair thing to do) – that the government is responsible for people, not they themselves.

O’Reilly, in his book, describes his own role in the culture war, calling himself a “traditional warrior”.  He calls out a number of individuals and organizations in the US which he claims are secular progressive in their thinking, but who claim to be neutral or unbiased.  In so doing, he hopes to expose them for who they really are, and to raise the general public’s interest and awareness in the topic at hand.  Seems unlikely, given how apathetic the aversage person is, but kudos to him for standing up for what he believes and trying to make some noise about it.

One thing I didn’t like about the book was that it felt slow-moving to me.  I generally keep on top of current events and politics, so very little of the book was news to me.  Also, he seemed to beat points to death a bit – repeating concepts over and over.  I imagine both these things are by-products of his targeting a generaly ignorant (to the issues) and apathetic audience.

So, if you’re already neck-deep in the culture war, you probably don’t need to read this book.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about but want to, you should definitely check it out.  If you don’t know about any of this stuff and don’t care to, definitely pass this one by – it’ll bore you (but I find that sad).  If you think everything I’ve said in this post is total crap, then don’t bother reading the book – it’ll just anger you. 

Has anyone else read this one?

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Tryptophan Strikes Again … and Again … and Again …

A shameless Techlore reprint

Okay, this is so wrong, but I feel compelled to be a little off today…Disclaimer:There is NO point to this blog entry.

Every year I vow not to eat myself unconscious on Thanksgiving, but again I’ve failed. Yesterday was a beautiful experience once again — when gluttony ended in coma. But I thought that at least I could learn from my favorite cardinal sin, and I wanted to share with all’y’all.

You probably don’t care why turkey is (almost!) as good as Nyquil for putting you out, but if you do, check out How Tryptophan Works.

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Does boycotting companies really help your cause?

It seems like I’ve received way more than my fair share of boycott emails – particularly those attempting to address grievances with large corporations.  Wal-Mart is the poster child for this kind of stuff. 

  • Wal-Mart doesn’t pay their employees enough – boycott them!
  • Wal-Mart has a homosexual agenda, and forces sensitivity training on their employees – boycott them!
  • Wal-Mart doesn’t say “Merry Christmas” – boycott them!
  • Wal-Mart is an evil big corporation whose executives make too much – boycott them!
  • Wal-Mart is destroying little towns by closing down main street – boycott them!
  • Wal-Mart sells stuff made only in China – boycott them!

It goes on and on.  And I have a headache.  More importantly, though, I have a question … should we really be reacting by calling for boycotts every time a large company like Wal-Mart doesn’t do what we would do personally?  I’m sure you’ve picked up that I think the answer’s “no”.  Here are a couple thoughts as to why…

First, an aside…  The “evil big corporations” aren’t really so evil, in my mind.  They create unbelievable numbers of jobs, and generate massive wealth for a lot of people (employees and stock holders alike).  They bring cheap goods and services to people from all walks of life, all over the world, mostly benefiting the poor.  And the tax revenues they generate are enormous.  There’s a reason towns fight over who gets the Wal-Mart (my little home town just went through that).  Many companies, like Wal-Mart, also bring significant improvements with them when they come into new areas as well.  And they are a far more pwerful vehicle for personal retirement planning than Social Security will ever be.

Corporations obviously have downsides too (some of which are motivation enough for calls to boycott in some peoples’ minds).  Executives are taking larger and larger salaries in comparison to the common worker, which is driving a huge (and unnecessary) wedge between laborers and management.  As a result, unions are formed with an increasingly adversarial perspective.  This – in my mind – could be totally avoided if business leaders knew how to take care of their employees better, were a bit more generous, actually valued the people that are making them all their money, etc.   Many corporations are careless about the environment and try to dominate the political process by funneling big money into the pockets of legislators who will help them get their way.  This obviously turns the public against them, which could also be avoided if they were more conscientious.  I’ve never understood why business leaders don’t pony up more money for important causes like protecting the environment, taking care of workers who get hurt on the job, voluntarily making sure wages are livable, etc.  Even if they were the most selfish people on earth, don’t they realize that it’s in their own best interest? … to say nothing of the fact that these kinds of things will be forced on them by government anyway, if they don’t do them voluntarily?

But I digress…  The argument for or against “big business” aside, I really don’t put much stock in the (seemingly constant) calls for boycotts…

  1. Boycotts don’t work.  No matter how well-intentioned the person calling for the boycott is, 9 times out of 10 it fails.  Why?  Because the bottom line is that the general public is far too lazy and/or apathetic to enforce a boycott.  Nobody gets on board.  The theory is nice – that business follows the money and if we withold the money, then they’ll listen to us – but the money always keeps coming no matter how loud the call is for a boycott.  You have to have a really famous, really unifying figure calling for the boycott to overcome this, and even then it’s touch-and-go.
  2. The issues aren’t as clear-cut as they’d like you to believe.  A big company like Wal-Mart is doing so much in so many parts of the world, that it’s almost guaranteed you won’t like some practice somewhere.  Action groups are famous for zeroing in on one thing a company’s doing in one specific place in the world, and making it the representative trait of the business.  Classic example…  I just had a friend send me a “Boycott Wal-Mart because they’re promoting a gay agenda” email.  One day later, a different person responded “Don’t boycott Wal-Mart because they’re encouraging their employees to say ‘Merry Christmas'”.  So which one is it?  I view this kinda like political correctness…  If your goal is to never offend anyone, then you’re going to have to lock yourself in a dark closet on a desert island, because it’s just not possible.  (And in truth, even that would offend someone.)  It’s a game you can’t win, and Wal-Mart would be a fool to play it.
  3. Boycotts turn off the mainstream.  Every time the general public gets wind of an organization boycotting someone, their “stock goes down” a bit.  It seems to me that these organizations are hurting their image by constantly having problems with some company somewhere.  Doesn’t that render an action group somewhat ineffectual, in that they’ve marginalized themselves (in the eyes of the average American) to the status of “nutjob fanatic”? 
  4. Find a more effective forum for your angst.  I don’t think boycotts are effective.  I think they’re hard to navigate, because the issues are hardly ever black-and-white.  I think they turn people off.  For all these reasons, I think activists would better serve themselves and others to get more directly involved in the culture war.  If you believe there’s a prevailing homosexual agenda in the culture, then leave Wal-Mart alone, work on reforming the education system, and win the hearts and minds of the people.  Wal-Mart is just responding to where they think the money is – which is their role as a for-profit business.  Etc.

Okay, I’m all ears.  What do you all think?

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The Search for (Artificial) Intelligence

  As many of you know, my company (Capable Networks) recently launched www.robocommunity.com, the official online community for WowWee Robotics– a brilliant little up-and-coming robotics / intelligent toy company.  WowWee is the proud parent of Robosapien (V1 evolution; V2 evolution), Robopet, Roboraptor, the RS Media, and others.  So, if you have kids who might love a new robotic toy for Christmas, check it out.

But the reason I post on this today is that I recently launched a thread on the community about artificial intelligence, and I thought you all might be interested in participating in the discussion.  It’s actually already quite fascinating, and I’m having trouble getting people to give me satisfying answers (we all know how I love to debate).

In a nutshell, I want to know where the line is.  Robots are becoming more and more sophisticated, as demonstrated by WowWee’s work (you wouldn’t believe what they have planned for 2007).  But when is artificial intelligence in play?  When do we cross the line between a sophisticated pre-programmed response to information gleened from sophisticated sensors, and actual “intelligence”. 

Anyway, check it out if you’re interested.  Read the thread.  Post your thoughts.  Help me get to the bottom of this.

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Social Security: Strengthened the Country, or Sapped its Initative?

In a recent post, Brad put forth the idea that our country is what it is (extremely strong and extremely powerful) in part because it has effectively blended capitalism and socialism.  As I understand it, he argues that socialism has some great ideas, and when you extract the best of what socialism has to offer, and mix it with capitalism, then you get a strong country like the US.  Here are his words…

Many socialist beliefs are very admirable. The idea to take the best of these and incorporate them into capitalism has made us the stable power we are today. Tax exemptions, unemployment insurance, WPA, Social Security, almost any federal regulatory agency, these all augment pure capitalism to give us a strong and stable economy.

There are lots of things we could talk about here.  Some of what he says here, I agree with.  An example would be in government-enforced anti-monopoly laws.  But for this post, I want to focus on social security.  Brad is making the point that “social security … has given us a strong and stable economy.”  It has “made us the stable power we are today.”  So, this post has a strong question / poll component…   Do you agree?

Here’s my position…  I totally disagree.  (shock!)

I disagree with the entire concept of a social safety net in the form it exists today.  We are a wealthy society, and as such we do have an obligation to protect the weak and poor in our midst.  If someone gets hurt at work and cannot provide for themselves, then we (as a society) should help them.  If someone loses their job and needs temporary assistance to help them get back on their feet, then we should help them do that too.  Education through the 12th grade should be free, so that everyone has equal opportunity to make something of their lives – not just those who can afford school.  When a disaster strikes (such as Hurricane Katrina), we should help those who were wiped out by the disaster (although I would have executed many of the details far differently – but that’s a distraction).  All these programs, which could be labeled “entitlements”, I support.  A wealthy nation such as ours has obligations to the poor and weak and underprivileged among us.

What I don’t like is the idea that the government will provide for my retirement or give me a paycheck if I’m too poor.  Neither was that the original vision for the program, nor is it reasonable / feasible to execute, nor is it good for the country.  The social security program in its current form effectively communicates to (especially poorer, less educated) people that their retirement is taken care of.  Don’t worry about fiscal responsibility.  Don’t worry about saving.  Don’t worry about being wise with or taking care of your money.  The government’s got your back.  There’s a safety net.  If you don’t save or don’t try or don’t hold down the job, no big deal.  You are entitled to a liviing wage in retirement.

Social security was formed in 1948 after the war, which followed the Great Depression.  In the face of new-found economy prosperity, a generation of people who had had nothing now wanted security – assurances that something like the 30’s would never happen again.  Now, 60 years later, there exist people who have lived off the system for generations, children who grow up knowing nothing else than to expect the monthly check from Uncle Sam, etc.  And we have to keep raising the amounts we collect and shell out, because what the elderly are getting out of social security isn’t providing enough to be a living wage.  Plus there are far fewer people putting money into the system now per person taking money out than there were 50 years ago.  This doesn’t mean that we keep raising the anti, it means we need to realize that this thing is broken – a flawed idea from the get-go, and put together a different plan.

I believe social security saps initiative, as do so many of socialism’s tenants.  They are idealistic, assuming that people are self-motivated, regardless of their circumstance.  This is simply not true.  Human nature is greedy, lazy, selfish – unless motivated to be otherwise.  In my mind, social security falls under the general category of “welfare” for this reason.  Perhaps I define welfare differently than others, but here’s my definition…  Paying people what you feel they deserve to have instead of in response to what they earn.  Social security is an example, albeit a retirement-centric one.  Many other welfare programs are more direct, such as food-stamps, etc.

Here’s the why-Jeff-believes-welfare-in-general-is-bad-for-our-country story…

My grandfather was born in 1907.  He was the 2nd oldest of 7 children – one older brother, and 5 younger siblings.  His parents both died before he finished high school – in the same year.  Actually, his mother was committed to a TB sanitarium, which was essentially the same as death.  He was 16, his brother had just graduated, and his youngest sister was 2 years old.  His older brother took off, because he had his diploma, and saw the way out, leaving my grandfather to care for his 5 younger siblings (ages 2 through 14) at the age of 16.  There was no welfare, no social security, no safety net.  By today’s standards – if we listen to the message of many liberals – he should have starved to death in the streets along with his siblings.  How could anyone survive under such horrible conditions unless we start giving them stuff?!  Instead, he rose to the occasion.

Grandpa dropped out of high school (never finished his education), and worked as everything from a coal miner to a wheat farmer to a millwright to an electrician.  He found work wherever he could and did what it took to raise his siblings, even through WWI and into the Depression.  His neighbors helped.  He grew a lot of his own food (which he had to learn how to do) in a garden in the backyard.  The kids all helped with taking care of the house, and each other.  Every other child got a high school education.  My grandfather sacrificed incredibly to make it happen.

And eventually, my mother (an only child) went to college.  The first in that family.  And now I have much of what I have today, because this man (my grandfather) worked his butt off to provide – to make a life for his family, and for future generations.  His work ethic, passed down through my mother, and my father’s work ethic that came from his parents, has been passed on to me.  Now, I work my tail off for what I have.  Out of every dollar I earn, I give some away, and I save some for the future – which has been true no matter what my salary has been, even when I worked at Taco Bell in college.  Only after that, do I spend anything.

My question…  Was it social security and other welfare programs that made this country great, or was it my grandfather and his work ethic and the hundreds of millions of men and women like him that worked their butts off like he did to build a life in the context of freedom?  Does social security teach this kind of work ethic?  Does a safety net make a man work and sacrifice like this?

My father was a mailman.  For over 20 years, he walked 9 miles a day to deliver mail in the small town in which I grew up.  Before that, before I was born, he worked two jobs to get ahead (no assistance from anyone) – but that’s an aside.  When he would deliver the mail in the hot summer, sweating like a pig, walking mile after mile, he would share with me several things he noticed that I think are worth mentioning in the context of this discussion.  Many of the houses to which he brought welfare checks had the following things in common in the hot summer.  Not every house, but there was a strong correlation between getting a welfare check and one or more of the following…

  1. The man of the house was home in the middle of the day watching TV.  I guess if they’ll send you a check for doing nothing, why not do nothing?
  2. The air conditioning was on and the windows were open.  I guess if you’re not working hard to pay your electric bill, you don’t really care.
  3. They gambled.  Many a time when Mrs. Jones was “so glad the check’s here”, it was because “I’ve been waiting for it so I can meet my friends at the boat this afternoon.”
  4. They smoked.  Can’t afford lots of things, but can definitely afford cigarettes.

This kind of stuff is very real.  It’s not everybody.  I doubt it’s even the majority.  But it’s real, and it destroys lives.  Can you picture my grandfather, with all those mouths to feed blowing money at a casino or on cigarettes or on air conditioning (let alone A/C that was trying to cool the front yard)?  No way!  And my question is very simple, does giving people stuff also give them a strong work ethic, or do you have to work hard to get that?  I see it in my own life.  If you give it to me, I don’t value it nearly as much as if I had to work for it.  Too big a safety net undermines work ethic, to say nothing of principles like the value of delayed gratification. 

What say you?

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