WICked

by Emma Onom

Published: April 9, 2008

The other day I was in the line at the grocery store while a WIC customer checked out ahead of me. Besides the extreme annoyance I felt waiting 10 minutes in line while the incredibly slow cashier tallied up the WIC items, it seemed pretty outrageous to me that the full conveyor belt with five or six milks and rice krispie treat fixins cost her only $11.

Now, I’m not complaining that a needy family is getting the help it needs. What I am concerned about is the way this country is conditioning its citizens to fail. I firmly believe that the country does have some responsibility to care for its residents to prevent another Great Depression. After all, the current economic crisis is proof that it doesn’t help anybody when half the country is going broke.

However, when the country helps people too much, it may cause the very crisis it is trying to avoid. Americans have learned that they can get what they want, even if they haven’t worked to afford it yet. Take the subprime mortgage crisis. People all around the country are defaulting on their loans because (surprise!) they couldn’t afford the loan they were given. Lenders gave out loans to people with bad or horrible credit, and it came back to bite them.

Unfortunately, with the extent of the mortgage crisis, coupled with the falling home values, this has come back to bite everyone. Now the Fed has to bail homeowners and lenders out, but the fixes are only a continuance of what has been happening for years. These people whose eyes were too big for their stomachs are about to lose that home they can’t afford, but the government may step in and try to stop foreclosures - for now.

Something clearly needs to be done to stop the financial crisis, but the government has got to stop giving Americans ways to get out of their own poor planning. Sure, this is the land where dreams come true, where anybody can be anything. But you can’t make something of yourself if you don’t work, and the federal government is teaching people they do not need to work for what they get.

When you look at federal aid programs like food stamps, welfare and WIC, there are certainly requirements that recipients must be trying to work in order to get their money. But if you visit the projects when that welfare check comes on Wednesday, how many people are working? It’s more important to be home when that check arrives than to be out working, where you could possibly make more money if you tried.

As I said before, these programs are wonderful and necessary, but if the government is looking for reform, they should think more about changing the public’s way of thinking. Be stricter on who can receive federal aid and for how long. Even if people stay at the poverty level, they will be happy there if the government is helping to support the family. Stop telling people it’s ok if they don’t have a job, because the government will feed that baby for you.

If this is the land of dreams, people need to learn again how to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.

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