I don’t think anybody in this country should be starving to death, or lacking shelter, basic medecine, or education.
I see people making purchases of extravagant food items with food stamps all the time in this area. I see it with enough frequency that it is clear it’s not an exception.
When I was first getting started and working 70 hours a week, this pissed me off a lot to see people who weren’t working nearly as hard or making as much of an investment in themselves as I was living so much better than me. It was disheartening. It made my efforts to better my circumstances seem belittled. This was not a short period of time, either, it was basically 1985-1994. That is a lot of years to pay your dues. It was very discouraging to witness the level of affluence that could be achieved, comparatively speaking, by not working.
I find quite often that the people who strongly defend this kind of thing, an ample and comfortable safety net, are consistently blind to a simple fact:
You encourage that which you subsidize.
In constructing a safety net, there has to be some kind of recognition of that fact. The stupidity of people who fail to recognize this fact boggles my mind.
There has to be a reward for self-reliance at the lowest level that is above the safety net at the highest level. If you fail to do set your safety net in this fashion, than you are encouraging poverty and the suffering of people. Causing people to suffer is a bad and evil thing.
At the minimum level of self-reliance, you can never afford lobster. You can never afford steak, crabmeat, shrimp or luxury foods.
You have to reach a level of self-reliance that can prudently afford these things before you can afford them. That sounds simplistic, but apparently people don’t get it. Not getting this kind of thing may well often be a contributing factor towards a person’s ongoing chronic poverty.
Big bags of rice are very cheap. Big bags of mixed red beans and rice are very cheap. These are strong staples. Bulk oatmeal is perhaps the most economical food you can purchase.
I know these things because I had to figure it out in order to feed myself and accomplish the other things that were important to bettering my circumstances.
If you give people the means to buy luxuries that they cannot afford on their own you are doing a great disservice to a large population of people who are doing without in order to better their circumstances. You are demeaning their efforts and discouraging them. You are not doing the person you are giving the luxuries to any favor either. You are discouraging them from making the effort to achieve them means to earn them themselves. You are hurting society which is deprived of the contributions these people could be making. You are not teaching them how to be self-reliant. You are teaching them how to be dependant.
Any fool knows that if you don’t set up a bird feeder in the winter most of the birds will find their own food sources. If you do set up a bird feeder you must maintain or the birds that come to rely on it will die. The same rules that apply to people.
If you wish to encourage people to be productive than they need to attain the luxuries they desire through their productivity. If you just give them to them you take away the incentive, you perpetuate poverty.
Poverty has to suck. Poor people have to suffer.
In order to have a safety net that works and encourages productivity, and discourages poverty, than being on public assistance has to be worse and cause more suffering on the people at the highest level of public assistance than somebody who is working 80 hours a weak at the worst job in the country and is barely getting by.
That means it has to suck really bad, and you should suffer a lot if you are on public assistance.
No lobsters, goes without saying.
Basic stuff people. Simple logic.
