A Long Paragraph Regarding My Thoughts on Welfare

Receiving something you did not earn is not good for you. Let me rephrase, receiving the basic necessities of life without earning them is never good for you. Receiving gifts is good, the ones from your family and friends, as they are (hopefully) a token of appreciation, friendship or love. These are good feelings to express and I am not against giving gifts in order to express them. I am against giving someone a "free ride." People might think I'm just jealous, or look at the benefits I've received and think I'm being whiny or acting like an elitist. If I am, perhaps it is because of those benefits I have received? Look at children, we can learn a lot from them, as they are, we once were, and as we are, they will become. What happens to most children when they hit the two year age mark? The story is that they become "terrible" and out of control. Why? Is it because for their entire lives to that point they have been "babied" and given everything they need to survive? I'm not saying this is bad, there is no way that I think we should leave an 18-month-old alone to fend for their self. I'm not saying that; I'm simply saying that we should look at this experience that so many people share in and wonder. Maybe this stage of development has a correlation to the behavior of the people in the environment of the child. Maybe we breed a sense of entitlement in the children. They may simply be responding to our treatment. An interesting thought experiment. What is it that brings them out of the "terrible two's?" They become autonomous. The child starts learning to do things on their own. They now can tie their shoes, communicate their wants and needs with their parents through language, they can feed themselves with less help than before. Autonomy sets in and they act for themselves. Let's look back at ourselves. Are we autonomous when someone else is providing for our basic needs, such as food and shelter? Or are we reverting back to toddler hood...

The rest of this post can be found in the Ajax's Whimsical Revolution ebook for Amazon's Kindle. The book is a compilation of my favorite posts, 78 to be exact, of which this is one. If you don't have a Kindle e-reader you can download the free Amazon Kindle app for PC or Mac.