Tag Archives: food stamps

Think people don’t want to work? Post a job and see

24 Nov

Job Fair Held In Midtown Manhattan

I hear more and more people complaining about shiftless hordes who don’t want to work. Maybe they know something I don’t, but when a supermarket near my house opened, 10,000 people applied for 400 jobs.

At a convenience market where I buy coffee, a cashier was complaining about her job, remarking how things are done differently at the other two places where she works.

There was a time when nearly everyone could work a single job, or perhaps two, and survive. Not so today. Wal-Mart has made billions for its founders but in Canton, Ohio, one store found it necessary to hold a food drive for its own employees.

The poor work, but still draw resentment.

John R. Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, told his cabinet, “I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor. That if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”

When the poor ask for more, the rich counter with charges of class warfare – hiding the fact that such a war actually is being waged in the opposite direction, and with great effectiveness.

I fully understand the propensity of the rich to take and hold all they can. Despite the efforts of Christianity and the other great religions, intense greed is endemic.

But why do so many average people believe that social programs primarily serve the indolent?

For sure, there are cheats. Lots. Nothing sends off a member of the middle class like watching someone use food stamps for groceries then buy cigarettes with cash. (This isn’t even cheating.) Such stories, sadly, prevent the recognition of real need.

In America, we are all tense and frustrated and filled with resentment and fear and sometime hate. For the angry Middle Class, the easiest target is the unemployed, who have come to represent a fault-filled force that siphons off taxes. Without such targets, many people would have a tough time getting through the day.

What can we do to stop this inner angst, this potentially explosive and destructive energy? We’d be so much better off without it.

Maybe the remedy is safe, secure, fair-wage jobs and the return of a culture of opportunity and equal advancement.

People find happiness in work, not welfare.

Corporations all over the U.S. are holding billions in cash. Might there be investment and jobs somewhere in those stashes? If we’ve all got to vent, why not send a little steam up instead of down? It’s time to stop wasting energy trying to disband a phantom nation of the lazy. It’s time to get to the real problem.

Lanny Morgnanesi

 

 

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Communist is jealous of former Communist

3 Jul

Putin-Xi Jinping

Xi Jinping, the president of China, visited Moscow in March for talks with Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia. Xi is a Communist. Putin used to be one. Still, the non-Communist impressed the still-Communist with all the things his country is doing for its people.

Back home, Xi told the Chinese how impressed he was with Russia’s ability to care for its citizens. In the U.S. we call this welfare, food stamps, handouts and the dole. Those who don’t get it resent government for giving it. But Xi thought it was noble and Putin said any government that denies its people the basic components of life has no heart. Worse, he said, doing so creates stress, anxiety, dissatisfaction, crime and turns people into animals.

Xi seemed concerned that China has not done quite as well as Russia. He told his people that Russia provides five guarantees:

  1. Free housing.
  2. Free medical care (but not medicine).
  3. Free education (including one meal a day).
  4. Free public water.
  5. Government review and approval before any company can layoff off a worker.

Putin, a tough old bastard who was a lieutenant colonel in the KGB, sees this as civilized and helpful in building the economy and keeping people happy and productive.

Would you be happier and more productive with these things? Or would you hate yourself and your government?

I always thought we didn’t have these things because the rich people had taken all the money. But in post-Communist Russia the rich people also have taken all the money.

So how do they do it?

Maybe by using what they saved from pulling out of Afghanistan.

I’ll end with a joke – a true story.

A former United States secretary of defense during the Cold War visited new Russia and was amazed.

“Everyone is rich,” he said. “They drive big cars, smoke big cigars, have money bulging out of their pockets. On their arms are beautiful women. It is just like Beverly Hills, except there are fewer Communists.”

By Lanny Morgnanesi

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