Posted by
stace on Thursday, January 22, 2009 4:14:43 AM
Last night, as I read the comments on Thomas Sowell's excellent piece on the housing debacle, I was impressed by just how well most of the commenters could write and, of course, how cogent their arguments were. It's comforting to know that there are like-minded people out there, that I'm not all alone in my belief in individual responsibility. In their stories, I glimpsed parallels with my own life. Like them, my husband and I started out as poor as church mice, and like them, we have worked very hard to make a good life for ourselves. We are far from rich, but we are happy with who we are and what we have.
Like them, I am utterly indignant at what "poor" has come to mean in America. "Poor" people here have microwaves, cars, and places to live. I have those things, too; the problem is that the "poor" have much more than I have. My children wanted a Wii this year for Christmas but we couldn't afford it. I'd like to take a poll of "poor" people to see just what percentage of them actually do have a Wii. How many have X boxes, PSPs, or Guitar Heros? My little kids don't have them, but I'm paying for the food stamps and the WIC vouchers of kids who do. My kids get their shoes on sale; we never pay over $30 for them and rarely that. But "poor" kids get shoes that cost over $100. My kids wear Target clothes not Gap clothes.
My point is this: if the government is going to take our money for poor kids, then those kids need to be poor, truly poor. They should wear hand-me downs, like my kids; they should not wear designer jeans. They should not know how to play the expert level of Guitar Hero. They should eat PB&J sandwiches with apple wedges for lunch; they should not ask me to pay for more than I give my own kids.
I certainly don't want kids to have to wear holey clothes, but my daughters should not have to wear worn out clothes, either, because we have to pay ungodly taxes to pay for the "poor." There is an injustice here that goes beyond any peceived disparity among the classes. Now, people who are responsible and work hard are being forced to pay for people who don't. The welfare system has created an entire class of people who think that they are entitled to taxpayer dollars even as they buy their new Wii systems. Yes, we need change; we need the definition of "poor" to change. NOW! Fat chance!