Wealth Redistribution, Waste of Money and Humanity
Kirk C. Klingler
We don’t need to revisit the idea of “Spreading the Wealth Around” as Our President Obama seems to believe is such a honorable cause. All we have to do here in America is look at our chronic poor and see the devastation that has been inflicted upon them by the War on Poverty. In the 1960s, in an effort to rid Our Country of poverty, President Johnson passed in Congress and signed into law a War on Poverty. It was a “noble” effort, but hugely misguided. It was simply a wealth transfer to the poor in an effort to alleviate poverty. Here we are about 45 years later and what do we have to show for it? Well, we have even more people in poverty than we had in 1965, so that obviously didn’t work. We have transferred over $2 Trillion from the working class to the poor with very little to show for it. The most tragic aspect of this War on Poverty is the human toll it has taken on the people that it was intended to assist. During this period, due to the stipulations placed upon the poor in order to receive the Government largess, the illegitimacy rates have skyrocketed, the literacy rates have declined and the previously stable Nuclear Families in Our Country have crumbled. We have morphed our poor into an Entitlement Class with an onerous Entitlement Mentality. They have lost their souls as a result of Government.
Look at the disaster in New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina as an example. The poor in New Orleans were given plenty of time to evacuate, yet they have grown so dependent upon others looking out for them and taking care of them for so long, they expected someone else to come and get them and to save them. Compare that to another disaster around that same time, the Greenwood, Kansas tornado. One is an example of what happens when the people are self-reliant, and the other is an example of people that have grown dependent. Greenwood, Kansas has made a remarkable recovery due to the people there rolling up their sleeves and getting to the task at hand to rebuild their community. The poor in New Orleans sit back and wait for others to come to rebuild their community. It is a sad testimony to the destruction of the human spirit due to dependency upon Government. This is a broad brush to paint with, as I know of people in New Orleans that are still trying to rebuild their community, but this example has more truth than exaggeration.
The worst devastation has come to the Nuclear Family. In order to receive Government largess the poor could not be married, many couples that would have gotten married did not in order to continue to receive their “benefits”. This caused illegitimacy to increase and the two parent household, and all of the benefits afforded children while being raised, to decline. Some women were motivated to continue to reproduce due to the extra money that would come for each child. To make matters worse, for each of these societal ills, caused by Government, the Government created a new program to try and fix the problem. That is why I believe that for each problem Government tries to fix, through Government programs, it creates twice as many problems. That do not include just the incredible growth of the Federal Government. Growth that is WELL beyond what our Founding Fathers envisioned our type of Government should be.
In addition to this, the Entitlement Mentality emerged. The, “we deserve this money and no matter how destructive these programs are to the Human Spirit you better not stop the money” thought process is like the mentality of a junkie. It is also very difficult to shrink these programs due to the dependency they have created. It is very easy to look at present day Europe and see the rioting and strikes that are taking place in France and Greece because the Government is running out of money and cannot keep paying these benefits to their people. Look at how Senior Citizens react when there is any talk of changing Social Security, which is a Government sanctioned Ponzi scheme. That is what we will see here in America if we do not rein in Government Entitlement programs so a sustainable level.
Of course we need a Social Safety net. We have had a Social Safety net since the beginning of Our Republic. The churches and communities used to help the poor and since this was a “close to home” addressing of these peoples problems the success rate of getting people back on their feet was much higher. First of all, if the people that were being help did not try and help themselves, they were eventually abandoned by those helping them so that either they failed, or hit rock bottom and they either pulled themselves up by their boot straps or succumbed to their demons. If Our Government would revert back to these entities such as the Salvation Army or community churches to assist those in need we would have a much higher success rate at a MUCH lower cost to the taxpayer. I KNOW that Americans can be some of the most generous people in the world. If we weren’t taxed to such an extreme, as we are now, there would be more disposable income to give to charitable institutions.