Thursday, May 04, 2006

Surprising words, considering the source

From Re-Framing the Immigration Debate, by Bob Burg:
Keep in mind that when President Johnson instituted government-sponsored welfare in the 1960's, it was to win the "War on Poverty." President Johnson predicted it would take two years to eradicate poverty in this country.

The result? Fifty years later, we have more and more people on welfare (even with so-called Welfare Reform), with many families into their third and fourth generation. Many children have never known their parents to have a job. If anything has been eradicated, it is the self-esteem of the welfare recipients and their children, many of them feeling they have no opportunity to live their own life. They are wards of the state.

Government-sponsored welfare has robbed the American middle class of much of their income.

Government-sponsored welfare isn’t even efficient. Sixty-six percent of every taxpayer dollar paid into the welfare system goes to the middle-class bureaucrats administering the system. Perhaps the remaining 34 percent goes to the needy. But, are all recipients needy? Many of us know people who have simply made the decision to stop working or not look for a job because it's easier to accept "free money." In a corrupted system such as this, there will also be people playing the system.

I didn't know him from Adam before I read this, though I'd heard of his bookWinning Without Intimidation: How to Master the Art of Positive Persuasion--and I know Robert Ringer and Michael Masterson do similar things and would agree whole-heartedly--I'm just surprised to see another guy saying these things. I keep thinking that my views are held only by a tiny, tiny minority.

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