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Whatever Happened to
"Individual Responsibility"?
Thursday, June 23, 2005
By Gordon Bishop
The headline on Page 1 of the Asbury Park Press, New Jersey's second largest newspaper, declared: N.J. is unaffordable for many families.
Below the headline was the solution: New cost-of-living report bolsters case for public, private assistance.
Yes, more "public and private assistance" for those who cannot afford to live in the Garden State.
America already is a socialist-welfare nation. Government keeps growing like an obese American wanting more and more stuff to satisfy their voracious appetites.
When reading news reports like this, I immediately ask myself: Who's responsible for this?
My mind always goes back to one basic, fundamental fact of life: You are what you made yourself. You, the individual, must accept responsibility for who you are.
The only folks who really need assistance are those with physical and mental disabilities. The rest of society can fend for itself. Remember Charles Darwin? - "Survival of the fittess!"
America offers every American (and throw in more than 15 million illegal immigrants) free public education and trillions of dollars in "entitlements" - from Medicaid and Medicare to prescription drugs and taxpayer-subsidized "grants" for just about anything and everything imaginable.
Yes, America became a "Welfare State" under President Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" - the beginning of federal government handouts and give-aways. Seventy years later, this is what America has become.
Jesus Christ preached "individual responsibility." Yes, Jesus could feed the people all the fish they could eat. But Jesus preferred to teach these people how to fish for themselves – how to become "self-sufficient."
America is becoming a big, fat lazy population of "takers" supported by self-sufficient "givers" (taxpayers).
Our once mean-and-lean government has become grossly overweight, inefficient and unproductive. It's government for the sake of bureaucracies. It's no longer government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Now back to the New Jersey socialist-failure problem.
The report on "The Real Cost of Living in 2005: The Self-Sufficiency Standard for New Jersey" refers to "one parent, one preschooler and one school-age child in which the adult makes $16,090 a year, or $7.74 per hour would be at the federal poverty level."
The report by the University of Washington always refers to a "single" person and their offspring being unable to live in New Jersey without more welfare benefits.
The issue should not be about how these people can't live in New Jersey without more money from government. The real issue is how did these people get into the financial mess they are now in?
It all begins with each individual's choices and decisions they have made during the lives. Did they take their free public schooling seriously. Did they develop any skills of value in the marketplace during their 13 years in public schools? Did they marry the right person? Did they get married at all, with or without children?
In America's big cities, some 75 percent of all babies are born out of wedlock.
Our expanding "Welfare State" has been destroying the "nuclear family" over the past 40 years. With a national divorce rate of more than 50 percent, and an illegitimacy rate of 75 percent in Urban America, it’s amazing that America hasn't gone bankrupt…yet!
With all these "entitlements" spreading out of control like a cancer, America today is up to its eyeballs in debt. Add up all the debt from entitlements, and we’re looking at more than $20 trillion the U.S. Treasury simply does not have. There are not enough working taxpayers anymore to pay off such a gargantuan debt.
As a nation, we're broke, and Big Government refuses to accept that reality!
What to do? You do what those who have succeeded and worked and lived the "American Dream." Take education and the work-ethic seriously. Stop whining and crying about your circumstances and do something about it. You don't have to work 16-hour days, six days a week, like most of today's billionaires and multi-millionaires. You can work a full-time, 8-hour a day job, and work part-time for four hours and boost your weekly income. That's 12 hours. You can do it. If the rich can do it, so can you.
Work at a Wal-Mart at the entry level and hone your sales skills and climb up the long ladder of success.
Carefully chose your friends - and whatever you do, don't waste time because time is money.
I have a brother 11 months older than I, and he took the easy path in life by dropping out of eighth grade at the age of 16. Fortunately, he was a good carpenter and was able to make a good living. But he took advantage of his special skills. Today, he's dying of emphysema (two packs a day since he was 16).
Develop your skills by getting a good education. You'll succeed, unless you develop a serious illness or become physically or mentally incapacitated.
Enjoy life! Make it work for you.
As for more :public, private assistance" for those without special skills, government should not be in the business of subsidizing the so-called "poor" in America.
Do what Jesus did for his followers: Become self-sufficient and lead a clean, productive, law-abiding life.
As for me, I was born with serious allergies, asthma and sinusitis. I've been on medication all my adult life. I'm heading into my 68th year of life - and enjoying it now more than ever, despite my genetic illnesses.
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