We the beggars: Why government gives us stuff
Every so often I see comments in Sound Off or on a blog like this:
“People voted for Obama because he promised to give them free stuff.”
“When did people decide that the government give them everything?” has to
“I don’t understand how anyone would want to depend on the government to take care of their needs.”
I totally agree, this kind of shameless begging for stuff and things and services has been going on far too long and has got to stop!
If it’s not somebody wanting to have surgery to take out their ruptured appendix, it’s some poor hapless hurricane victims, begging the government to give them a FEMA trailer or a grant so they can rebuild their houses.
Or wealthy shore dwellers looking for Uncle Sam to put their beaches back. Why can’t they dredge their own beaches?
Sometimes it’s people demanding that President Trump come down to West Virginia or out to Kansas and “pull a Carrier” by ordering some corporation packing up for Vietnam to just give them their jobs back. Why can’t they ask for their own jobs back?
All this unseemly begging may have started in 1787 when James Madison wrote this blueprint for the government giving us stuff:
“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Ever since then, it’s been one thing after another.
First it was, “send the Army to protect us from the Indians.”
And then from the Indians: “If you’re going to steal our land, you have to give us some place to live, like a reservation.” What a bunch of whiners.
Then it was all those crippled old soldiers begging, “give us veterans benefits and give our widows and children pensions.”
The privilege of fighting for democracy and freedom wasn’t enough for them — they wanted a government handout, too.
Next thing you know the slaves wanted the government to give them their freedom, which it did, at a cost of 600,000 lives in a bloody Civil War.
You’d think they would have been satisfied with that without wanting jobs or farms (which they never got) or schools for their kids – free public schools at that!
Then people moving west wanted free land so the government passed the Homestead Act of 1862. All you had to do was be a citizen and work your free 160 acres for five years.
My grandfather, William O. Mayberry, got one of those homestead grants in 1917 and bought himself a herd of cattle that promptly froze to death down to the last steer in one of the harshest Wyoming winters ever recorded.
Things didn’t work out too well for him, but honestly, what a taker!
Government has been giving people stuff throughout its history. It’s rather the point of government, isn’t it?
People asking for affordable health care are not the first to ask the government for something they cannot provide for themselves.
Other stuff the government has given us includes the Tennessee Valley Authority, Big Bird, the Hoover Dam, Social Security, Head Start, Legal Aid, farm subsidies, sidewalks, wheelchair cutouts, town clocks and the interstate highway system.
And when I say “us” I’m not just talking about individuals.
Federal money flows to state, county and municipal governments to pay for sewers, mental health care, safe drinking water, anti-poverty programs, subsidized housing, police dogs and lots of other things.
The very reason our federal, state and local governments exist is to – shhh – redistribute the wealth; you know, collect our taxes and then use it to provide us with stuff.
Taxes and services are like the air in a balloon; squeeze it at the federal level and the air flows to the state level, squeeze it there and the air flows to the local level.
That’s why New Jersey has the highest local property taxes in the nation, because former Gov. Christie Whitman did such a good job cutting state taxes.
You can let air out and relieve the pressure, but then you have to do without the stuff you think is vital to your life or make other people suffer without the stuff vital to their lives.
Politicians give us stuff because we give them votes and once the government has given us stuff, it’s really, really hard to take it back, especially if we notice it’s missing.
Republicans plan to take away health insurance for 23 million people (hundreds of thousands here in Pennsylvania).
And President “Prime the Pump” Trump’s 2018 budget wants to take a whole bunch of stuff from us while giving huge tax cuts to the wealthy and not cutting the deficit very much at all.
Trickle-down economics is the only idea the Republicans have – give the rich tax cuts and they’ll generate jobs and more taxes – but it has never worked. They just keep the money.
But we “forgotten people” may notice when our stuff is gone, which is why I think the Senate will treat the House health care bill and the president’s budget like live snakes and not touch them with a 10foot pole.
They may nudge them a little, from a safe distance.