You’ve probably heard the
news. The Cato Institute found that in
many states people can earn more money from government welfare programs than
they can if they take a paying job.
Evidently in Hawaii a family of four can make the equivalent of sixty
thousand per annum on the dole.
What you may not be aware of
is that this underestimates the amount of money the poor have available. When, several decades ago, the sociologist
Christopher Jencks decided to study the “out-go,” as opposed to income, of the underprivileged,
he found that they spent almost twice as much as they theoretically earned.
How, you may ask, is this
possible? The answer is that not every
dollar received came in over the table.
Nor were all of them legal. Many
even came from friends and relatives.
This then explained all that “bling” and those large-screen TVs.
Once upon a time Americans
took pride in their “can-do” abilities.
Prepared to meet virtually any challenge, they assumed they could do whatever
needed doing. Was there a continent to
be tamed? They were ready to take it
on. Could they construct a rocket to the
moon? No sweat!
But now we seem to regard
ourselves as a nation of weaklings. We
require someone else—preferably Uncle Sam—to take care of us. The question is not what we are going to
build—our president has already assured us that we do not personally build
anything—but how we are going to divvy up the spoils.
Ours, we have heard over and
over again, has become a dependency,
or some say, an entitlement
culture. The issue is what will we be
given, not what will we achieve. He or
she who can persuade the federal government to cough up the most loot is the
winner in this race to the bottom.
In fact, winners must
win. They must take on difficult tasks
and succeed in accomplishing them. Only
then do they deserve the respect that has traditionally been accorded
victors. Otherwise they are losers—no
matter how loudly they crow about deserving the best.
Despite this, millions of
Americans apparently feel too weak succeed on their own. They whine, and wail, and gnash their teeth
about how unfair life is and demand that the winners be taken down a peg or
two.
Not long ago our national
motto was “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” whereas today it is
more accurately “the land of the weak and the home of the losers.” It isn’t that we do not boast millions of
young people prepared to defend our freedoms; rather it is that the protesters
and lay-abouts are currently setting the national agenda.
Still, when I ask my
students at Kennesaw State University how many of them aspire to be losers, not
a single arm goes up. On the other hand,
when there is reading to be done or papers to be written, a large proportion
look for the easy way out. As long as
they can pass a course, they do not worry about passing with flying colors.
Plainly, hard work is for
chumps. Nevertheless, as Malcolm
Gladwell observed in his book Outliers, truly successful people dedicate
years of concerted effort to becoming good at what they do. Because they want to win, they devote
themselves to becoming strong enough to prevail.
We must never forget that if
our objective is for everyone to do equally well, we must set standards
everyone can meet. That means we must
become a nation of less than mediocrities.
Because half of us are always below average, this half can only be
accommodated by very low benchmarks.
The truth is that not
everyone can win; yet if we are to be a nation of winners, we must both work at
it and acknowledge those who come out on top.
The false God of victory for all merely ensures defeat for all.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
No comments:
Post a Comment