Be Ye Doers

In Thessalonians 3:10, The Bible tells us, “If a man WILL NOT work, he shall not eat.” Our society today has forgotten what our country was built on, The Bible. We used to believe and follow it. Now we follow the money, not the American Dream of following the money, but the World view of following free money.

People came to America Land of the Free because we were free to work, earn a living, and make a good life for ourselves and our families. People now come to America Land of the Free because, if you come, we will give it to you, FREE.

We were taught in the Bible to help the poor and those in need. A Google search showed that there are over 100 verses about helping the poor. The principle on which we built our Welfare system.

We have all seen the pictures of the shanty towns during the Great Depression. Families lost everything in the stock market crash in the 1920's or the Dust Bowl of the 1930's. These people were the definition of "in need". President Franklin Roosevelt believed that people needed to work, and wanted the work, so he created The New Deal. The Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) gave people a direct payment, given directly to those who had lost most or all of what they had had. But this was not meant as a long-term plan. It was a fill-gap measure to help while other plans could be made. The payments were given as payment for jobs performed. Don’t misunderstand me. Some could not work. They were taken care of, of course. But those who could work were asked to work for the payments.

Another initiative was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). This program aimed to put over 2 million unemployed men to work. They built bridges and reservoirs and dug ponds. They planted trees, cleared land for building and camping. Another program to help provide work was the Civil Work Administration (CWA). This group worked on things like building parks and repairing schools. This program also hired people to do office work as writers and artists. The largest program during this time was the Works Progress Administration (WPA). This program matched the skills of the workers to the work that needed doing. This program built many of our interstate highway systems. The Federal Theater Project put actors to work performing plays across the land. They hired writers to write histories and artists to paint murals. They even took traveling libraries to rural areas.

These programs helped millions of citizens get back on their feet, earning much-needed salaries and skills, and regain self-esteem.

(https://www.ushistory.org/us/49b.asp)

Although these programs died out, we had other systems to help those in need. Over the years, though, people have learned that they can live on Welfare and not have to work. Just as with everything else, if you want it bad enough, you will figure out how to do it. People have been coming up with ways around the system for decades, even longer.

A nephew of a friend got laid off from his job. He applied for unemployment benefits. Nothing wrong with this picture. We have all been there. We pay for it out of our paychecks each month. The problem begins when he gets a job and keeps drawing unemployment. This could easily be corrected by calling to get the benefits stopped. But no, he continues drawing both checks. When he got caught owing thousands of dollars back to the government, he quit his job to keep them from having him pay it back. Now he stays at home and draws a check. He’s not the only one doing this. There are stories all the time about people who are “hurt," or "can’t" work. Then you see these same people doing lawn work, fixing the roof of their house, fishing, riding motorcycles. If you are fit enough to do these things, you can work. I knew a lady who had been diagnosed with degenerative disc disease. She was on a pain pump because her pain was so bad. The whole time I knew her, I had never heard of her working because of her disease. One day she got out in the yard, on her hands and knees, and weeded the flower bed, pulling up bushes and dead plants. She was too diseased to work, but this work was much more intense than anything she would have done at most jobs she could have held. Another, a distant cousin of mine, got diagnosed with a disease that kept her from working. She draws a check from the government. The problem is, she is also working a job and getting paid under the table.

It's not just one generation. A presenter at a workshop I took told about a student her husband had had. He taught wood shop in an urban school district with a high poverty rate. One of his students, a young lady, came running into the room all excited. He thought she had gotten a scholarship and would be going to college. No, her news was that she had just found out she was pregnant. She was excited because she was going to get a check just like her momma. We live what we learn, and too many learn to live off others instead of standing on their own two feet. And the government is rewarding them.

The old proverb goes, Give a man a fish, feed him for the day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. This could be reworded, give a man a handout, and tomorrow he will be looking for another. Teach a man to provide for himself, and he will be productive for his lifetime. We have taught a generation to look for a handout instead of teaching them to provide for themselves.

COVID19

In 2020, society was faced with a situation unknown to our generation. Our world came to a halt, literally. COVID 19 shut down businesses, schools, and even many government entities. For the first time, students were being taught virtually. What we had started as once or twice a year, virtual days, became a full-time virtual school. Teachers were thrown into the fire, having to learn to hold online classes overnight. One local high school has an enrollment of almost 800 students. When school convened in 2020-21, only about 225 students returned to tradition, face-to-face learning. The majority opted for the virtual format. The problem with this is that they are not logging on and completing their work. The principal faced an incomparable failure rate. If the students don’t log in to the teachers’ instruction sessions, don’t complete their assignments, don’t take assessments, the teachers have no choice but to fail them. A friend of mine works for the school. She said that she has less than 20 students total in all her traditional classes. The most she has on-site in any one class is 7. The rest are virtual. She has had to cancel class multiple times because no students logged on to the required instructional webinar. Some parents are working with their teachers to get their students back on track, but others, those working multiple jobs to make ends meet, or those that don't value education themselves, aren’t. This lack of education will only multiply the number of welfare recipients. The students aren’t learning to be productive, aren’t learning to provide for themselves, and will be looking for a handout to survive.

Another issue caused by COVID 19 was the number of businesses closed. Many workers, workers who were being productive, earning a good living, went overnight to being unable to provide due to massive layoffs. The government, to help these workers, increased the unemployment benefits to help fill in the gaps. While this seems like a noble act, it was. But the drawback was that while many workers went back to work as soon as their industry opened again, many refused to go back because they were making more money staying at home. My friend's co-worker asked for a raise so he would be making the same as staying home. A friend of mine owns his own service-based business. When he began recalling laid-off workers, they declined the recall to continue drawing unemployment. I saw this everywhere. People who had previously provided for themselves, now become dependent on others to provide for them. I see Help Wanted signs everywhere I look. Yet there are people, able to work, sitting at home drawing an income for doing nothing. No one wants to work. There is no longer an incentive for good work.

We need to get back to basics, back to where we began. How? Where do we go from here? I don't have any answers. I wish I did. I do know that we must keep teaching our students to work hard and learn to be productive. Maybe their generation can find the answers and pull us back.