Pay it Back or Pay it Forward

Years ago I attended a week-long conference that was quite a commitment and test of endurance in San Antonio an hour and a half drive from my home town. Monday - Thursday were three-hour sessions in the evenings, and Friday and Saturday were full days. Our conference leader told us that he used to not charge people to attend, but he learned that the people were more committed to attend all of the sessions if they had invested something in it. If it didn't cost them anything, they didn't feel obligated to follow through with it.

That's often true about many things in life. How often do you see rent property go downhill in appearance and wear and tear versus a home that is owned by someone? In the small, private school where I was a facilitator, I received the most criticism and fussing from the parent whose child's tuition was paid by a generous benefactor.

I've seen firsthand how the work ethic, honesty, pride and motivation for people to improve themselves are destroyed by a government system of paying someone for nothing in return. I've seen multiple generations learn to beat the system by getting paid cash so it's not reported as income all the while they are still receiving government benefits. I've seen men come ask my former husband for jobs, and when he said he had work for them to do, they turned him down, saying they didn't want to work, but they had to show that they had made some effort to find a job in order to get their government check. I've seen women have more children in order to receive more money from the government. I've seen couples who didn't get married so the woman could get cheap government housing as a single mother, but the man lived with her anyway. A friend of mine who worked in a tax return service regularly saw people trying to cheat the system. A single mother would claim her children as dependents one day, and the next day, the grandmother would try to claim the same children as dependents.

I had several fourteen year old boys in my sixth grade class who didn't even try to learn while they were in school. They had been failed the maximum number of times and knew they would be passed on to the seventh grade. When I asked one of them how he was going to support himself if he had no skills, he told me he was going to get a check like his mother got. Several years later, I saw him standing outside the door with his girlfriend and baby, waiting for the Department of Human Services to open. He was true to his word, and the devastating cycle continued.

Government welfare was meant to be a temporary help up, not a generational lifestyle. It gets people used to living on the path of least resistance, for little or no effort on their part. When things come easy, people tend to get lazy. Working hard doesn't come natural for most of us, and being rewarded for doing nothing over a long period of time definitely doesn't reinforce good work practices.

I know a single mother who used government assistance so she could get her degree, and she was able to get a good job and support herself and her family. She's been a tax-payer and contributing citizen for over thirty years now. That's how it's intended to be used.

I get frustrated when I see students get through school by any means possible, and graduate by the skin of their teeth only to realize they have little skills to be productive citizens.

I get frustrated when I see a political party build its voting base by offering free stuff and services they don't have the money to pay for it, or extending unemployment payments instead of creating a healthy environment for creating jobs in the private sector, where the real tax revenues come from. When the biggest employers in a town or city are government employees, where is the money coming from to pay those salaries?

If a person is getting government assistance, they need to be actively involved in:

1. getting more training/schooling for a better job or 
2. self-improvement by using the public library's resources and taking advantage of any training opportunities available or
3. doing some kind of volunteer work that would take a bit of the load off the government in return for receiving a check 

Some places to volunteer include: the public schools, on the streets as a crossing guard, the food bank, nursing homes, charitable organizations.  And any healthy person can pick up trash in the parks and public areas or neighborhoods. If someone has helped you along the way, you need to pay it forward by helping someone else in need.

And oftentimes a volunteer or parttime job can lead to a full-time job when people see one's good work ethic and attempts to learn. The Bible has a lot of good common sense about human nature, and one of the principles about working says, "If you don't work, you don't eat." [II Thessalonians 3:10] and that is referring to able-bodied adults.

How long would a business last if it paid millions of its employees not to work? It'd be out of business in no time, and yet our government is doing exactly that, and they're putting half of the bill on a credit card! Paying someone not to work is like putting the carrot at the wrong end of the donkey, and it's sinking us.