Thanks for the reassurance. It came at a good time for me. I owe you one,
my friend. :)
> thoughtfulness. However, despite the ever-popular sentiment against
> people (generations of families) on welfare, there are a number of
> people who have never reached the point that they can become
> self-reliant in any way. Sharecroppers and two-income families with
> three children and a net income below $20,000 come to mind. Supporting
> them without requiring something in return has not worked and should be
> replaced with something else -- agreed. But to expect these folks to
> become entrepreneurs or junior grade managers in a corporation goes
> beyond the pale.
At this very moment, my wife and two younger children are visiting relatives
in Demopolis, Alabama (I have to finish another chapter of The ColdFusion 5
Bible for Monday, so I'm stuck back here in Atlanta -- waaah!). She is
staying at her parents' second home, which has been fully paid for many
years now, and which sits on a very nice parcel of land that is not too far
from the land her paternal grandfather worked on as a black Alabama laborer.
Her maternal grandfather raised her mother in the poorest part of Macon,
Georgia. Some of her cousins had been lynched.
In both cases, my wife's grandparents told their children, in effect: "The
only way to get out of here is to think your way out." My mother-in-law
studied until she dropped, and so did my father-in-law. They scraped and
saved and studied until they graduated college first and second in their
classes, respectively. Having no money with which to start a marriage, my
father-in-law joined the Army, in return for which he received his medical
education and served as a doctor until his service was done.
Eventually he worked his way into a thriving private practice, penned
authorative research papers, and became one of the dozen or so doctors on
the national board of otolaryngologists (ear, nose, and throat). These are
the doctors who test the other doctors to see if they're good enough, and
you have to be a top mind to be one of them. Brain and heart surgery sound
difficult, but they pale in comparison to head and neck surgery-- ask any
surgeon.
Meanwhile, my mother-in-law raised her children and instilled in them the
same principles and warnings her parents gave to her. He did without the
trappings of being a doctor in favor of reinvesting in his practice and in
educating his four children. She did without to raise the children at home
and tend to their needs. When the youngest was old enough to take care of
herself after school, my mother-in-law started medical school -- at 42.
Needless to say, she excelled through determination and became a doctor,
too.
Then they scraped every penny for many years more to send their children to
college, and then medical school. My wife instead went into business and
received her MBA from Emory (they say she's the smartest of them all). The
cycle just keeps rolling on...
Both her parents are 65 now, and recently retired. They spent a lifetime
handcrafting a family with care and doing without along the way to give
their children better lives, and they have succeeded fabulously.
Not one single penny of welfare or other handout money ever found its way to
any of their palms. They had the constant gripping fear of poverty chasing
them every step of the way, and a difficult goal with the reward of
accomplishment -- seemingly beyond reasonable grasp -- pulling them forward.
These are regular, normal people who never had a chance given to them in
their lives. The point of my earlier message is that such chances are very
_good_ to give, and would enable people like my in-laws to go farther faster
and sooner, but that free enterprise should provide these chances and not
the government, because free enterprise has the incentive of profit to
target the right people to receive appropriate assistance in education,
living expenses, etc.
Not everyone can do what my in-laws did alone. Help _is_ needed in more
cases than we can ever imagine. Right now, there is a young child somewhere
in America, standing at a fork in the road of his life, and he's about to
take his first step toward disaster. If only he'd been given proper family
guidance and education to start and continue his young steps down the right
road we would one day see a great leader, but instead he will soon adorn a
mortician's embalming table, and none of us will ever know his name.
Why? Because:
1) Paying for hundreds of failed "social services" (really just siphoning
mechanisms for political friends) costs billions of dollars,
2) Those billions come from tax payers, so tax rates are high,
3) High tax rates mean more work in order to survive on what's left over,
4) More work means mothers working full-time jobs in order to make ends
meet,
5) Working mothers cannot raise and school their children at home,
6) Educational needs must be (supposedly) met by yet another failed social
service: public education,
7) The child comes home at 2:30 PM with "nothin' to do" until mom gets home
at 6:00 PM (this time span is commonly known as "the sex, drugs, and
rock-and-roll hours"),
8) Now the child has neither a real education, nor sufficient family
guidance, nor any sense of self-control, and is easily manipulated by the
wrong elements.
My proposal is this:
1) dump the majority of social services (most of which are horribly failed),
2) lower the total tax burden at point of purchase to a maximum of 25% by
Constitutional Amendment (no more income tax, social security tax, etc.),
3) collect it as a national sales tax on all goods _and_ services (even
Internet purchases),
4) lower taxes will let Mom come home to raise and watch over her children,
5) privatize everything feasible (water works, jails, schools, health
programs, road repair) and pay for these from the appropriate portion of the
25% tax,
6) let free markets and non-taxed religious organizations span any truly
needed gaps left behind by the former "social services,"
7) remove laws that prevent adults from doing things that do not infringe
upon the Constitutional rights of others by either force or fraud,
8) fasttrack these changes within a single four-year presidential term, and
gladly suffer the necessary consequences of such a quick change.
Remember: businesses make more profit when more people from all walks of
life have good jobs, and they know this fact very well. Businesses will
create good jobs as fast as the government can get out of their way.
> But if I'd
> quit high school and spent the last 30 years doing manual farm labor,
> that would be a tall order, indeed.
If you had quit to support your family (i.e., responsibility), then you rose
to the occasion and chose your course in life, you are now gainfully
employed in your trade, you pay your taxes, and you have society's respect.
This is now your lot in life, if you choose to remain there. If, however,
you want a better way for yourself, and you're not too close to retirement
age, then there are ways to be trained in a totally new field and be
supported until you can get on your feet in your new trade -- all without
government help. You just have to look for the business to whom you can
successfully plead your case. It happens all the time.
> I have no problem with at least some portion of my
> taxes going toward supporting the less fortunate.
Actually, I agree. But I would restrict this to a government-run
"clearinghouse" that finds the private program that best fits their needs.
This would be an efficient and reasonable use of minimum tax dollars.
> If the truly rich in
> our nation would pony up for charity, maybe government could get out of
> the business.
If the government got out of the business, and corporations didn't have to
pay for this business, they _would_ give much more than they already do. By
the way, I'm not picking on your words, but do you by chance mean
"philanthropy" rather than "charity?" I ask because philanthropy is a
hand-up, whereas charity is a hand-out. Philanthropy invests in a man's
future; charity hands him a dollar. Personally, I don't believe in charity
outside of one's own family or religious organizations.
> Personally, I see a difference between greed and ambition.
Yes, and what a difference! True ambition has an honorable objective; greed
only feeds gluttony.
###
I have enjoyed this debate very much, and will be happy to continue it as
time allows. In the meantime, I hope everyone is doing well and in good
health, and that you are all happy with life.
Respectfully,
Adam Phillip Churvis
Advanced Certified ColdFusion Developer
Productivity Enhancement, Inc.
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