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Labor Day, sympathy, and welfare

Thursday, August 21, 2008

People critical of our welfare system are often accused of being unsympathetic, uncompassionate, and callous toward the plight of the less fortunate. But the Observer disagrees.

The Observer’s sympathies lie with the people who get out of bed everyday and work. By laboring to pay taxes, workers give up part of their goals and dreams — indeed the very hours in their lives — to support others who are suspended (some would say entangled) in welfare’s safety net.

The current welfare guidelines, both state and federal, mostly use income as the measuring stick to determine who gets a welfare check or welfare services. This, of course, means that a person who chooses not to work is “income eligible” for a panoply of taxpayer-provided money and services. It’s a senseless system. Welfare should be limited to folks who can’t work; not people who won’t work.

The problem, as the Observer said in the first sentence of this column, is that anyone who espouses any limitation whatsoever on welfare is labeled callous, greedy, and mean-hearted. And no one wants to be called those things. Especially not politicians, who are in the best position to fix the problem.

And so the working folks go on paying taxes to support the non-working folks. In fact, about 10 years ago, Missouri’s government began spending more every year on social services than education for the first time in our state’s history. It’s been that way ever since.

Labor Day approaches. As it does, let us lend our gratitude to the working people. As Grover Cleveland said when he accepted his nomination for president: “A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil.”

The Settlement Observer is a resident of Farmington.

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