When giving a right to one person requires that someone else provide it, whether or not they want to do so.Some of the laws promoted by liberals (looters) continue to scare the Hell out of me. I can't believe that intelligent people can even conceive of such laws, much less take them seriously enough to actually introduce in a legislature.
Such is the bill once introduced in Congress by Ron Dellums, Representative from Oakland, California [A real conservative bastion, that. -RT]. It was designed to create what would have been the biggest altruistic rip-off of productive and creative achievers in the history of the world. One that created a shiny new right. The right to a job with a living wage. The right to have the government take money away from someone else to provide it. This bill is an example of the way forced altruists think. All they want to do is guarantee everybody something (with your money, not theirs), regardless of the impossibility of providing it, just to gain those people's appreciation and, more importantly, their vote, so as to be able to stay in power.
Never mind the fact that such a bill could not possibly be enacted [Good Lord, I sure hope not! -RT] or enforced, the people to whom this largess is promised won't find that out until later. (After the next election, and then they the looters, of course, will always have someone else to blame its failure on. Usually big business.
WHO PROVIDES THE JOBS?
The first question that comes to mind is: Who is to provide these jobs, and Why should they? The forced altruist's answer would be "big business." And as to: Why should they? Because they can afford it, that's why. Right . . .because they've got a lot of money, they should give some of it away to provide jobs for the poor. This completely ignores the fact that unless there is a job there for those people to do, to give them a job is a gift, which they did not, and will not earn.
BY WHAT RIGHT?
My question is this: "By what right do people demand a gift from the rich, just because they're rich?" "Why does the need of one person, who earned nothing, create a right to the money and property belonging to another who has earned it?" I see people on the street all the time near homeless shelters just killing time until the shelter opens for the night. None seem to be at all interested in going after one of the many burger-flipping jobs that are going begging for lack of applicants (Yes, they don't pay much. But it's more than they earn "killing time. Until the shelter opens" and they have the "good feeling" that comes from earning their own way. All these people seem to do is laze around drinking their booze, smoking their cigarettes (and their pot), and doing their drugs. Has anybody ever wondered how people who can't afford to pay for their lodging can afford such things . . . not to mention the new fancy sneakers and the multi-colored, expensive sports gear I see so many of them wearing?
BUMS?
When I was a kid, they called such people bums. And there weren't nearly so many of them so most people never saw them. Now they've got lawyers, and political advocacy groups who routinely lie about how many of them there are so as to enhance their own power. And now Politically Correct speech (Newspeak) won't allow people to call them bums any more, and their numbers are, predictably, increasing as more and more lazy people figure out that if they become homeless, someone else will give them things. That they're no longer bums, but are homeless, a term that confers upon them a certain kind of respect they couldn't get from being bums.
It galls me every day I go to work to earn my living, and every time I see a help wanted sign in somebody's window, to think that my tax money, which with all the types of taxes I pay being considered is more than half my earnings, goes to this "safety net" these people demand of me and everyone else who earns his (her) own living. Why should these bums . . .er, uh, "homeless people" be allowed to laze away their days on my money?
I'VE BEEN THERE
There have been times in my life when it would have been easier for me to have taken the dole and I instead took one of those low-paying jobs so that I could retain my self-respect by paying my own way. Such jobs are, of course, stopgap jobs, to be held while preparing for, and looking for something better, unless you want to go into management, which usually pays pretty well. Maybe you can't live very well on what these jobs pay, but unless you've got lots of kids, you sure can't live on welfare unless you're willing to live very simply, indeed. And each new kid costs more than they increase your welfare, anyway. The thing that really bothers me is that, in this day and age, Dellum's bill might even have had an outside chance of succeeding.