Unlike most parents on public assistance today, welfare helped me go to school, earn my college degree, and get a job that pays me enough to support my family. Today, I pay more than $14,000 in taxes annually - almost double what I used to make working in a low-wage, dead-end job. And I've paid back - several times over - the investment that welfare made in my family.
If I had waited for a man to marry me off welfare, not only would I still be a single mother, but my family would still be poor. My education, not marriage, got my family out of poverty.
from
Bush Welfare Agenda - Married to a Myth
commondreams.org
And that is precisely the point. The moneyed elite (with some exceptions) of this country is quick to tar their opposition with the brand of class warfare, but they practice it daily. They don't want to provide "stepping stones" to allow people to climb the economic ladder. Rather, they want to maintain the largest possible differential between their position of privilege and the mass of the population. For it is through that very differential that they derive their feeling of significance and self worth. The concept of expanding the pie so that everyone is better off is an anathema - if it shrinks the differential. I recall an interview with an Orange County (CA) dowager some years back. She was appalled at the prospect of low-income college tuition assistance. Her self worth was being threatened. The idea that we're all in this boat together is alien to the elite, unless they are the passengers and the rest are galley slaves.
Aside from the moral indefensibility of this position, is the fact that it is myopically stupid. Such a society is inherently uncompetitive - too much wasted potential. Surely, this same elite is currently embarked on extending their elitist model to an international hegemony. But this only makes other societies strive for a way to compete for survival. The US society achieved its position of preeminence by being the most egalitarian - and thereby tapping more of its citizens potential. It is now on a hara-kiri course - less egalitarianism at home while forcing international competitors to change to compete more effectively. This isn't national security, it's national suicide.
JMO
lurqer |
