Getting ahead in America

2014

Do you agree with the following statement? I sure do, except the restore part.

“And we’ve got to restore opportunity for everybody, so that no matter who you are, no matter how you started out, no matter what you look like, no matter what your last name is, you can get ahead in America if you’re willing to work hard and take responsibility for your life.”

Those are the words the President said when he signed the order raising the minimum wage for government contractors. Raising the minimum wage is not the issue, fine beginning in 2015 we will pay parking attendants at a federal courthouse $21,008 a year instead of $15,080 assuming full-time work. Now what?

The problem is the President and his supporters say nice sounding words like “willing to work hard and take responsibility for your life,” but support policies and programs that encourage just the opposite, especially the take responsibility for your life part. In reality we are encouraging people to take less and less responsibility and accept more and more from the government. We have many programs in place that discourage increasing ones income for fear of losing benefits. For those among us not motivated to take responsibility for your life we encourage slothful behavior. Am I encouraged to work harder if I can count on a 40% raise by law?

Helping those who need help is one thing, encouraging a society to accept what the government doles out is another.

As Ben Franklin once said:

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. – B Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor (29 November 1766)

For those who are willing to work hard and take responsibility opportunity still abounds in America. The 1% haven’t taken it away, the successful from previous generations haven’t taken it away, but those who purport to be most concerned surely are; in the most insidious ways.