Teaching a Man to Fish

I happen to read an excellent article penned by Thomas Sewell recently which in honest straightforward terms exposed the roots of entitlement. If the government doesn’t chip in for school breakfasts, lunches, and in many cases, dinners, children will starve. If the government doesn’t provide Section 8 housing people will be living on the streets. If the government doesn’t pony up to provide assistance with prescription drugs old people will chose either to buy the drugs they need and starve or buy food and die due to the lack of medication. We are fed these dire predictions daily by politicians and the news media when in fact the above is not even true of the poorest among us.

I don’t want to appear hard-hearted. I do believe there are those among us that desperately need to be taken care of as they lack the ability to care for themselves for varied reasons however, the percentage of those requiring such extensive assistance is incredibly small. Try this experiment. Close your ears to the politicians and the media and open your eyes. Those around us considered the ‘poor’ usually have a vehicle, a television or televisions, air conditioning, cell phones, ovens, refrigerators, washers, dryers, DVD players, cable or satellite connections all of which are not provided by government programs or do not fall under the category of ‘government assistance’. As for the starving poor, based on Department of Health figures the poor among us are overweight more often than any other segment of society.

There is a societal picture painted by politicians and the news media and perceived by many and then there’s reality. As an example let’s look at the elderly, a group used repeatedly to bolster support for new or expanded government programs. The reality is the elderly are, for the most part, the wealthiest among us. An elderly homeowner is, on average, three times wealthier than a thirty-five year old homeowner and almost fifteen times that of a homeowner under the age of thirty-five. We are to believe they are incapable of paying their own medical bills or purchasing needed medications? Evidently, yes. Capability is no longer the issue. As a society we have confused need with desire. I need that second car. I need cable television. I need prescription drug purchase assistance otherwise I’ll have to eliminate my vacation this year. ‘I need’ should be ‘I want’.

Even harder to understand, we turn to ‘government’ for assistance in satisfying our wants. We are the government, especially when the expenditure of funds is involved. The government provides services with our money. There is no magic government money tree. We are the tree. Of course there are those that need our (government) assistance. Granted, it is our obligation to provide that assistance. We are not obligated to provide assistance to those that can take care of themselves but refuse to do so. To stand on one’s own two feet many times requires sacrifice. One may have to forego a new iPod in order to purchase junior’s asthma medication.

By throwing money at the ‘poor’ and the ‘elderly’ we’ve done nothing but create a generation or two of dependents which to various politicians equates to votes. What other reason is there to oppose changes to entitlement programs of any type in spite of the fact the ship of State is sinking? A professor at George Mason, Walter Williams, actually did the math and discovered it’s much cheaper to simply give the poor enough money to lift them from poverty than it is to support the myriad government social programs in existence. Dependency means votes. Give a man a fish and he depends on you to give him a fish tomorrow and the next day and the day after thus, if anything should happen to you, he might no longer get his fish. Teach a man to fish and he no longer needs your assistance therefore he might no longer need you. Are you going to believe what you’re told or what you see? I think I’ll trust my own eyes.