I’ve railed a few times here about the lack of compassion people feel toward those less well-off than themselves. The perception that social programs like welfare are simply enabling people who are otherwise perfectly capable of getting and holding a job is common. If not for welfare, those same people would get off their duffs and get jobs and become productive members of our society.
Reagan began this latest war on welfare and the poor back in the ‘80s by planting the idea that there were lots of people who were gaming the system and using tax dollars to buy steaks and drive expensive cars. “Cadillac queens,” he called them, convincing a nation that they were being played for a fool.
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| No, that's not Mumbai, that's Detroit |
Let’s forget race for a moment and just concentrate on the people. Welfare was created to help those who lacked the fundamental abilities needed to hold a job[1]. Without getting into skills (which are things you learn), what are those abilities? Two come immediately to mind:
1. Ability to be subordinate (without losing pride)
2. Ability to take satisfaction in doing a good job
Yes, those are in order of importance. You may never have considered these as abilities, but I assure you that you will never be able to keep an entry-level job, especially in this economy, without both of them.
If you’re really poor, chances are that you’ve been treated poorly, and you probably don’t like it too much. One of the requirements of any entry-level job is that you’re able to take massive amounts of crap from someone who sees you as a necessary evil and a tool. You’ll be condescended to, pushed around, and told to do things you really, really don’t want to do. And all for the least amount of money the law allows. This is how work starts for most everyone and it's hard for anyone. If you can’t pass this level, you’ll never advance to Level 2.
The reason taking pride in your work is so vital is that it will be your only motivator for most of your entry-level career. You’re probably not going to be paid commission, or given a promotion or pay raise in a reasonable amount of time, and you’re probably not going to get a lot of positive feedback. So what’s going to keep you coming back day after day to a job that pays you less than welfare?
If you have those things, good for you. You’ll probably do really well, at least on Level 1 of the world of work. But where did you get those abilities? Were they instilled in you by parents who role-modeled those behaviors? Or were they simply a gift, given to you in a toolbox handed to you at birth?
Many people think they worked for these abilities. Nonsense. They were either given to you as part of your genetic makeup or they were drilled into you by people who knew you’d need them. The idea that you chose them and worked for them shows a drive that can only be innate.
What if you never had that? What if your parents never knew how to give that to you because their parents never gave it to them? This, friends, is the cycle of poverty. If you’re not stuck in it, thank your god or your parents, but you did not work for those abilities, and you did not choose them. They were given to you.
Pride, intelligence, perseverance, creativity, communicativeness, assertiveness, drive, competitiveness--these are the things that have allowed you to succeed, and they were all given to you. They are gifts, and they are necessary to acquire any of the skills you need to do anything professionally rewarding or worthwhile.
Do you honestly think you owe those less fortunate nothing? Are you so selfish that you believe that you deserve your lot in life and that they deserve theirs?
[1] For the sake of this article, let’s assume we’re talking about people who are mentally and physically fit.
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