A DIFFERENT WINDOW; WE'RE JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE

Some people get up Monday through Friday mornings, dreading the day's work. Some people enjoy what they do to earn a living. Then there are people who don't work. Some have inherited wealth or have made enough money to be able to retire. We see people on the news who have won a fortune, but I personally don't know them. We envy people who don't work for a living, unless they receive what is called government assistance.

Not long ago a friend and I were discussing government assistance. My friend was angered by what she called "people who don't want to work. They let someone else's money support them." She resented the fact that she worked and they lived off the money she paid in taxes. I got the impression that she felt superior to "those people." I thought her anger was misplaced.

My friend said "those people" don't want to work for their living; they want to spend their time doing the things they like to do. Well that's what I want, too! That is what everyone wants. Isn't that why we buy lottery tickets and dream of an unknown rich relative leaving us a fortune? Lawsuits are one way of getting money. We may say we only want justice, but even if the thing sued over did not cause a person to be unable to work, people still demand "enough money so I'll never have to work a day in my life."Everyone's dream is to only do what they like to do. In that way I am, and you are, just like everybody else. It is true that some people are pursuing the dream in ways we find unacceptable. But let's take an honest look at government assistance and the people who receive it.

There is a portion of society that doesn't work. These people are strong and healthy. They have proven that they don't want to work. They provide for themselves by taking from the ones who do work. We take that group of people and tell them "You are no longer allowed to work beside us or live in our community." We remove them from our presence. Yet we provide them with food, clothing, and shelter. We call them prisoners.

We provide more than the basics for them. We also spend a great deal of money providing them with things that a lot of the working people can't afford. Prisoners demand and get television, schooling, and health care. They have the right to leisure time activities. They have libraries and shops where they can be creative and express themselves. The money for their support comes from our taxes. This is a form of welfare. According to Marianne Williamson in The Healing of America "....Prisons are half of all public housing built in this country in the past 10 years."A few people in our world can work but don't want to work and try to get others to support them through the programs we have provided for the ones who can't work. If we discover they are not being honest in their attempts, we call them criminals. We just may send them to prison where we end up supporting them and not allowing them to work.

There are people who can't work because of age or physical problems. We provide less for them than we do for the ones we have labeled prisoners. Everyone in some way, shape, or form receives government assistance. And everyone in some way, shape, or form wants more of the money the government has at its disposal. Be it the form of health care, tax cuts, breaks, and refunds, grants and subsidies for education, we all want a share of government assistance.

According to Paul Hawken, in his book The Ecology of Commerce, "In reality we have not one but two welfare systems. The first is meager, consisting of aid to the unemployed, dependent children, the poor and helpless. It is seen as charity, a hand out, a grudging acceptance of social responsibility, but it is almost always accompanied by judgment, admonishments of failure, and a high moral tone. The second welfare system is large expansive and expensive. It comes in the form of large government grants and programs (also) to subsidize the rich in the form of interest payment deductions of their houses, giveaways of timber and mining rights on government lands, government-funded research in universities, revolving door policies between defense industry and government, resulting in expensive poorly planned procurement policies and so on.""The list of recipients of these handouts from the government is long, but they are not seen as the recipients of welfare. However the fact remains that three times as much housing subsidy goes to the top fifth of the population as to the bottom 20 percent who need it the most."This is a rich, abundant world. There is enough to go around. All people deserve the basic things of life whether they are able to work for them or not. Whether they WANT to work for them or not. Everyone should have nourishment, shelter and health care. Would any of us actually want any human to suffer from hunger, thirst, cold, or disease? Even someone who refused to work.

I believe we can provide the basics for all human beings without taking anything away from anyone else. We have the means to see that all people have the basics they need to survive.

It is not communism to see that all humans have the basics. It is simply loving and caring about others. It is not a responsibility that should be given grudgingly and with stipulations. It is providing for basic human rights. It is goal worth working for.

Sounds like a impossible dream doesn't it? All human achievement starts with a dream. We can let each step take us towards a dream or we can sigh and say that's just not the way life is. Why is life the way we don't want it to be? Because we have let it be that way. Marianne Wiliamson says "There is very little difference between actively hurting someone and refusing to do something when someone else does." I feel I must apologize to the unknown "that kind of person" who my friend was angry with. I could have defended you, I should have defend you. In reality we are all that kind of person.