Polls always show people are for helping people that need help. It's not that conservatives don’t like the idea of lending a hand to those who need it, they don’t like government mandating it.
Social programs (like Welfare), in the eyes of many, are forced charity. No one wants government to tell them where they can go to church and no one wants government telling them where their charity should go.
We hear all the time about how much people on the right don't like taxes, even the ones for millionaires. They don't want to support things (like Welfare) that they feel give free money to people who like to take advantage such programs and sit at home without working. I can understand the values behind that (work hard, take care of yourself, don't take advantage of anything). I’m reminded of a bumper sticker I see every so often: “Work Hard. Millions on Welfare Depend on You.”
So: if we did away with Welfare, would everyone go get a job and everything would be happy and fine again? I think not. As anyone out of work in this economy knows, there aren’t always jobs available.
So what? If we do away with social programs, what happens? Apocalyptic crime and death? I don’t know, that’s obviously a problem we don’t want to see unfold, so: we need to find our values or at least our logic, because no one wants a bunch of homeless people flooding onto the streets, either.
How do we get rid of programs like Welfare? We need to give our money to what we do believe in. If people actually gave to the charities which we believed in, there wouldn't be a need for so many government programs. Churches need to step up and help people instead of giving ministers crazy salaries. People need to step up and tithe. How much do people really give to Non-Profits? Think of it as a percentage of your salary and ask yourself if you’re proud of that number.
What about your church? Where is its money going? Do you know (because shouldn’t you?)? How many churches have a pastor who’s driving a Benz, then comes into church and asks his congregants for more money. I’m sorry, but why is a person making $20,000.00 a year tithing so that rich ministers can buy sports cars? There is something wrong with that.
If it's not entirely blasphemous for a liberal like me to say, I would like to see a lot of social programs disappear, too, but if we want our taxes to go down, we need to examine our values. None of us want to give up our paychecks to the government, but we also want roads and libraries; we don't want homelessness or hunger in our cities. We want to work hard and experience the social mobility that the American dream promises. No one likes feeling like their paycheck is going to help some lazy poo sit at home and watch CSI re-runs.
If we want to eliminate programs like Welfare, we need to create a country where people don't need it. Someone needs to take care of people in hard times, though. That should be taken care of by churches and charities, but the problem is that right now, churches and charities obviously aren't taking care of all of it. Why not? Because people like you and I don't give as much money to churches and charities as we should, people don’t pay attention to what their churches do with money, and too many churches sit on their money instead of doing what Jesus would have done. Despite what people think about God's interventionary powers, God isn't going to drop dollars in the collection basket. WE do that. God isn’t going to rain mana down for the homeless people. Do we let them starve?
We need to examine our values. We need to give money to the causes that we believe in and eliminate the need for government programs which waste taxpayer dollars with inefficient programs. We need to be good, generous, kind people if we want a society that doesn't need to tax people in order to make sure that all families are fed.
So: put your money where your mouth is, no matter which end of the political spectrum you fall on.
Also: I am a Christian. This is wrong.
image from Toothpaste for Dinner
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