Neighborhood Ministries

We saw the same thing with welfare. When I worked for the welfare department back in the 1970’s, many of those on welfare did not want to go to work because most jobs available to them paid less than they got on welfare. I encouraged them to get starter jobs which would reduce their welfare check but their pay plus the remaining welfare assistance would be more than the welfare alone. However, the other welfare workers discouraged them from getting low pay starter jobs because the workers had to refigure the client’s checks every month which was a lot of extra work. When politicians realized that people were making no effort to get off welfare, they realized they had to limit the time that clients could get assistance, or the clients would never make any effort to get off welfare. Now Democrats are pushing for a guaranteed minimum income. It would encourage those earning under the minimum amount to quit work since they would still receive the income which would be more than if they worked. It would also  increase the control of Democrats who continually tell those receiving government subsidies that if Republicans get in power, they will abolish the program so the people receiving subsidies will continue to vote for Democrats.

During covid, we saw in a small way why socialism is attractive and why it is destructive. The government expanded unemployment to help those out of work. That is a noble gesture designed to help people. The government also extended small business loans to help businesses continue paying the salaries of their workers while laid off, however there was a very angry reaction of workers against those businesses that got the small business loans because the workers could receive more from unemployment than they were making while working and they didn’t have to work for the unemployment. Socialism creates the same problem. Why work if you get paid anyway and if you have to work, there is no incentive to work longer hours because you do not receive anything extra. Therefore, the first do not work at all and the second work only as much as they are required. That is why socialism always fails and results in poverty for everyone. Everyone wants to take but very few want to give and those willing to give don’t give anymore than the minimum required.

President Biden pushed financial institutions to support investments that promote Social and environmental programs rather than picking investments that show a solid base with good promise of being profitable. This is risky because many such investments are new and do not have a solid track record. Many of those investments were environmental companies owned by Democrat lawmakers or ones that they had major stock holdings in. Since those stocks would ordinarily be very risky, they would not have much value and could be bought cheap. Since Democratic politicians knew ahead of the announcement, they could  have bought up additional stock in them. By directing financial institutions to support them, it drove the value of those stocks up and enabled those lawmakers to profit from it. That is called inside trading and is illegal. There is increasing evidence that such risky investments may have led to the failure of the Silicon Valley Bank which in turn led to the fall of a number of other major banks and set off a banking crisis. While President Trump canceled that order and allowed banks to return to choosing investments based on sound business procedure, the threat remains if another Democrat President is elected.