Work Harder: People on Welfare are Depending on You
A friend of mine, Steven Garcia, was driving to work and noticed a bumper sticker. He recently posted this to his Facebook profile:
While I was driving into work I saw this guy with a bumper sticker on his car that said, “Work harder: People on welfare are depending on you.” I thought, “Geez how vulgar is that. Especially right now when people have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.” ASSHOLE!
Today I’m in an argumentative mood and I’d like to over analyze and this statement because it’s what I do best. If you tend to get offended when someone disagrees with your morals it’s probably better to stop reading now. In fact, it’s not a bad idea to stop reading my blog completely so that I don’t crush your delicate feelings.
Steven is implying, through his comment, that he has sympathy for those who have lost their jobs, which is not the same as people on welfare. The unemployment programs are run by each individual state, but are completely separate from welfare and are based almost entirely on your effort to find a new job and your previous work/salary. The term welfare is generally used interchangeably which is unfortunate due to the negative connotations of welfare that inevitably follow.
Let’s assume for a moment here that Steven confused welfare with unemployment. People get and keep their jobs by one or more of three ways:
- Hard work
- Good luck
- Family influence
This list pretty much sums it up. I can’t think of any situation which can’t be categorized into this list. So if an individual loses their job, it’s most likely because of one or more of these items. Maybe they were slacking on the job which would indicate a lack of hard work. Possibly they hit a string of bad luck and the company they worked for failed. Finally, we all know that money is power and when families have a lot of it they tend to influence things like careers. ::cough:: Politics ::cough:: I could take this argument to the point that I state any loss of a job is the result of a lack of hard work of the individual due to the fact that each of us has the opportunity to research their personal situation and assess the risks of each aspect of their own life, including their employment situation, which would make them ultimately responsible for everything that happens to them. However, I’ll save that argument for another day because it’s just bound to piss off more people than necessary.
So we’ve established that while unemployment is unfortunate, it’s not unforeseeable nor a mystery. Ultimately, most of us have the ability to understand the principles of cause and effect. We’re also tuned in to the outside world so the fact that the country has been in a recession shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Does the general population have a responsibility to support the portion of the same population which lost their job due to one of the three foreseeable reasons I’ve listed above? My response: yes and no. I believe that we have a moral responsibility but not a social responsibility. I would like to think that I was raised and taught to be kind to others. That’s my moral responsibility and if I fail to follow that moral path then shame on me but it’s certainly not a crime. However, as Steven point out, it may make me an asshole. My problem comes when we confuse social responsibility with moral responsibility. To make things clear, I consider my taxes to be a social responsibility. My taxes pay for military protection, garbage pickup, education services, etc. I have a social responsibility to pay for those items since I utilize them each and every day of my life. However, I have absolutely no influence on the events that take place when an individual loses their job, unless I fired them. So if I’ve had no influence, why do I also have a social responsibility to take care of them? Furthermore, if I fail to take care of them in the form of paying my taxes then that’s considered a crime and I will face prison time which will in turn increase your taxes and social responsibility. Ironic, isn’t it?
The same logic applies to welfare, although we’ve established that welfare is separate from unemployment insurance. Why do I have a social responsibility with criminal implications if I don’t give my money to those who have failed to work hard, failed to foresee bad luck approaching or had a family influence force them into an unfortunate situation?
I’m not going to get into the intentions of the United States Constitution because we have Supreme Court Justices for that. What I will mention is that our laws tend to be shifting towards expanding social responsibility in place of moral responsibility. In the most simplistic sense possible, this is tyranny. Raise your hand if you think the Puritans had it all figured out when they imposed biblical law in place of social government. Raise your hand if you believe that the Taliban has the right to force their idealistic beliefs upon an entire population. If your hand isn’t raised, then why do you support the US Government and Obama forcing moral standards into law such as unemployment insurance and welfare?
That wasn’t a rhetorical question. Please comment on this and let me know because I can’t think of a single reason.
I fail to see the distinction between the intentions of welfare and the oppression of the Taliban. Sure, the effects are completely different and of a vastly different scale but the intentions are the same: to force the moral beliefs of one group upon another through the use of power.
2 Comments
I don’t feel like writing a carefully reasoned essay to refute Jeff’s argument, but just had to write something. Lil Jeff seems to feel he has a social responsibility to support, with his taxes, the things HE makes direct use of (garbage collection, police, education, etc.) and a moral responsibility, but not a social one, to help people out who fall on hard times. This is an arbitrary distinction. Social responsibilities stem directly from moral ones (all legislation is fundamentally based on morals, or social codes), and because morals are based on social relationships, although I also consider the mistreatment of animals immoral. The things we pay taxes for, like welfare, are based on moral principles like the belief that everyone in the USA has a right not to starve to death, to be protected from violence and theft, to public education, emergency health care, a safe water supply and reasonably clean air, and many other things. Because Jeff doesn’t directly benefit from something paid for by his tax dollars does not mean it is his option not to pay taxes for it as long as he lives in a country whose elected representatives determine what laws our people have to obey and what services they can benefit from. If we had a congress, president, and judiciary who were all Libertarians, there would be minimal taxes, very few public services, certainly no welfare, and those who felt a moral obligation to help the poor would do so whenever it was convenient, leaving most of the poor with no help at all. It goes without saying that with an even greater gap between the rich and the poor than there is today (it is actually possible, even though currently 5% of the population of the US controls 95% of the wealth) you would have a lot more ignorance and disease (Why should I pay for your child’s education or your health care?), and sky-high crime rates. As it is, we have millions of people (yes, these are PEOPLE, Jeff) who have lost their jobs and homes, who lack any insurance coverage, and in some cases end up living on the streets. They will not be taken care of by private charities or church groups; they will suffer and in some cases die. That is a moral and a social issue, and fortunately there are some elected representatives who want to give them some measure of assistance, but in Jeff’s world, they’re on their own. In Jeff’s world, what would our “society” look like? It is the stuff of which revolutions are born, happily, and religion, unhappily ( oh, by the way, as miserable as this life is, you will be rewarded in the next, in exchange for your complete subservience to the church and its morals, or social code…. )… enough already. By the way, if you have yet to see Michael Moore’s new film, “Capitalism, A Love Story”, GO! Unless you agree with Jeff, in which case you’ll hate it….. oh go anyway, you may just be ignorant, and not stupid, and may get something out of it.
Tom:
Always good to hear from you. Just to make it clear, I agree that we need to follow the law as our elected representatives created it. However, I still might not believe it’s fair. The beauty of democracy is that I have an opportunity (no matter how small) to change what I don’t believe is fair.
I believe that everyone should have the opportunity to take care of themselves. That means we can’t make laws against hiring a particular gender, race, creed, etc. from working in a particular job. However, it doesn’t mean that everyone else should put money into the pockets of others. Having the opportunity to succeed and having the right to be successful (have money, food, shelter) are two entirely different things. If we say that everyone has the right to have $1m then the government would be obligated to give everyone $1m. That’s crazy. However, if we give everyone the opportunity to earn $1m then it just means that there are no laws against the ability to earn money.
I haven’t ever found anyone to agree with me on my social views so I expect the tomatoes to fly. In fact, I even agree that if the world was run by my beliefs it would be horrible and we’d all basically die. The conflict, in my mind, is why we should create a system that’s unfair just so we can exist.
On that note, as a citizen of the United States of my own free will I feel as though I am obligated to abide by the requirements that are requested of me by the law. My only reprieve from this would be to claim a plot of land and secede from the country. That’s not planned to happen until 2024.
-Jeff