Posted by
Rural Anorak on Wednesday, November 19, 2008 10:06:44 AM
Welfare? Food stamps? Pffftp.
Those programs have done more harm to the well being of this country than they giving benefit. By their continued existence, they have fostered a society that no longer desires or understands the value of hard work. How can I say this? Easy, I’ve seen it firsthand.
I first witnessed this effect when I was seventeen years old. I was working in a grocery store, bagging groceries. A customer came through the checkout with his daughter. In his shipping cart were the groceries for the month and the little girl wanted a piece of candy. The man looked at his daughter and said, “Honey, maybe next time we come to the store. Daddy has to buy groceries today.” The man paid for his groceries with food stamps. Within the next few days, a group of people came through the checkout with some food. It wasn’t a lot and they paid with food stamps. Then they put the non eligible items on the counter and pulled out a pile of money, the kind of pile that would “choke a horse.”
Those episodes have stuck with me for over twenty years. To this day, they make me mad. Not because the first man didn’t have enough to buy his child a $0.25 piece of candy, but because the other people apparently had enough money so that they didn’t need to receive food stamps. Yes, I know that I did not and do not know all the circumstances, but the appearance is such that the second group was taking advantage of the system.
In later years, I worked at another grocery store and saw similar episodes, to the extent that I heard people say that they weren’t going to get a job because they made more from welfare than they could from any job.
What has happened to the work ethic in this country? This is the land that came out of the Great Depression and the Second World War as a leader in manufacturing and industry. Why are we not maintaining our lead? Why do immigrants (legal and illegal) perform jobs that could be filled by our own citizens?
Basically, why are we rewarding failure????