When I was a kid, I had the good fortune to live right smack dab in the middle of western Washington. To the west, you had the Pacific Ocean, the Olympic Mountains, and the Puget Sound. To the east, you had the Cascade Mountains. In between were thousands of acres of forests, lakes, and rivers. And no matter where you went, you could always see Mt. Rainier rising far above the clouds. I can honestly say I was blessed to live in a place where natural beauty was so abundant. For the last few years before my parents moved us to Alabama, I was even lucky enough to live in a gated community high in the foothills of the Cascades, where the primary rules of the community was to interfere with nature as little as possible. It surrounded three beautiful lakes with miles of trails that I would walk or ride whenever the mood hit me.
Since then, I've gotten farther and farther from that place, both physically, and in my heart. I've moved all around the country, either as a result of my time in the Navy, or simply because it was where the gods felt I was needed at the time. This is the first place I've lived since I left Washington that I've felt like I was close to nature, nestled at the foot of the Cumberland Mountains as we are. Yet lately, I've felt as if I need to get closer. I can see the mountains rising up only a few blocks from here. I pass over Big Creek every time I drive to town, or watch it wind beside the road as I head out to the in-laws' place. But it just isn't enough.
The last few months I've wanted more and more to be in those mountains. To feel them rising up beneath me as I make my way along some trail or another, trees rising up on all sides to shade me on the way. I've looked up a number of places to go hiking in the area, and even found a trailhead only a minute or two away from here. Ideally, I would pack up a tent and supplies for a couple of days, and just walk. Camp on the trail overnight, and keep going. Sadly, I have neither the time, nor the proper equipment for a hike like that. So at the very least, I want to grab a day pack and see how far I can go. Maybe it will only be a couple of miles. Maybe I'll make the entire La Follette/Jacksboro/Careyville leg of the Cumberland Trail (it's about 11 miles long) in a day.
All I know is that I can feel the mountains, the trees, the rivers and creeks calling out to me. I need to be out there amongst them. And I will be. Soon.
Monday, August 20, 2012
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Possible Futures
What you are about to read is an excerpt from a work of fiction written by David Weber. The reason I've chosen to write it here is because I can see some eerily similar trends within our own nation. As such, I thought I might present it as one of many possible futures for this nation, couched in terms of a futuristic, space faring society. In it, he describes the progress of a major Star Nation which progresses from a Constitutional Republic, to what was essentially an expansionist dictatorship. All credit for what follows belongs to David Weber.
"The People's Republic of Haven
Although the Haven System lies 667 light-years from old Earth, 155 light-years further distant than Manticore, the first shuttle landed on its habitable planet (also called Haven) on 1309 pd (post-diaspora), over a century before Manticore was settled. This was possible because of the fashion in which the introduction of the Warshawski Sail had revolutionized the logistics of colonization. Haven's day is 24.56 standard hours in length, divided into 13 months: 9 of 32 days each and 4 of 31 days each. The short months are the 3rd, 5th, 10th, and 12th. Every 4 years, the 3rd month s 32 days long.
Haven lay in a particularly attractive region, with an unusually high proportion of F, G, and K class stars, and the original expedition was estremely well financed as a joint venture by no fewer than eleven corporations based on member planets of the Solarian League.Moreover, the planet of Haven proved well named, for terrestrial life forms adapted to its envrionment with a minimum of difficulty and its climate was very nearly idyllic. With a powerful PR organization to tout its attractiveness, it exercised a magnetic effect on would-be colonists of the League and, with the availability of the new hypership technology grew at incredible speed. By 1430 pd, the Republic of Haven already boasted a planetary population of almosta billion and was beginning to mount colony expeditions of its own in what became known (despite the fact that six other systems in the region had been colonized before or almost simultaneously with Haven) as the Haven Quadrant.
By 1475, the Haven economy and government had proven themselves extremely efficient and effective. Politically, Haven was a representative democracy with a strong and politically active middle class, and its economic policy enshrined the principles of liberal capitalism with minimal government interference. Couple with the "jump start" provided by the colony's highly favorable initial circumstances, the combination of market efficiency and flexible government created a planetary standard of living at least as high as that of most Solarian League member worlds, and it became the envy and the pattern for every other world in the quadrant.
For the next two centuries, Haven continued to fulfill its promise, rising to a system population of almost seven billion and becoming a sort of interstellar Athens. The Haven Quadrant, although composed of independant worlds and star systems, rivaled the Solarian League for economic power, and it remained a vibrant and expansive entity, unlike the essentially satisfied and content League. Although the quadrant contained no wormhole junctions, it had access to the Manticore Junction (and, later, to the Erewhon Junction) and thence to the League, and there was every reason to believe that its expansion and prosperity would continue.
It did not. Precise identification of a specific event which caused the change within the quadrant is impossible, but in general terms it might be called over-achievemnet. The quadrant-and, in particular, Haven-had done too well. Its wealth was incalculable, and it began to seem unfair that that wealth was not more evenly distributed. In particular, capitalism, as always, had produced stratified classes, ranging from the extremely wealthy to the marginal and even sub-marginal, and if the members of Haven's "sub-marginal" class were immeasurably better off than, say the pre-Anderman citizens of New Berlin, they were not well off compared to their own affluent fellow citizens.
The Republic thus began to experiment , cautiously at first, with assistance and welfare programs to increase the opportunities of its less advantaged citizens. Unfortunately, what began as an experiment gradually became something else. Transfer payments became increasingly importantfor the maintenance of the industrial poor, requiring greater levies on the productive elements of society. Marginal industrial operations were shored up by protective tariffs, government loans, and outright grants to encourage full employment, which both undercut the overall efficiency and productivity of the industrial base, and encouraged inflation. Inflation further worsened the condition of the poor, requiring still higher transfer payments-payments which were soon adjusted for inflation on a mandated basis-and, as the network of assistance proliferated, it came to be seen as a fundamental "right" of those receiving the aid. By 1860 pd, Haven had issued its famous "Economic Bill of Rights", declaring that all of its citizens had an "unalienable right" to a relative standard of living to be defined (and adjusted as inflation required) by statute by the legislature.
In the process, the government had initiated an unending spiral of inflation, higher transfer payments, and increasing deficit spending. Moreover, it had (quite unintentionally, at least at first) undermined the fundamental strength of its own democracy. The middle class, the traditional backbone of the Republic, was under increasing pressure both from above and below, caught in the squeeze between an increasingly less productive economy and ever larger levies against its earnings to support the welfare system. Whereas the middle class had once seen the upper class as (at worst) essentially friendly rivals or (at best) allies in their joint prosperity, they came to see the wealthy, like the poor, as enemies, fighting over a dwindling prosperity. Worse, the middle class's traditional aspiration to upward mobility had become an increasingly remote dream, and it was much eaier to focus resentment on those who had more than the middle class than on those who had less-a tendancy which became ever more pronounced as "enlightened" commentators and academics secured dominant positions in the media and educational system.
Perhaps worst of all, was the emergence of the "Dolist" blocs. The Dolists (so called because they were "on the dole," receiving government assistance in greater or lesser degree) were still franchised voters and, quite logically, supported the candidates who offered them the most. It was a case of self-interest, and the Dolists' self-interest interlocked with that of increasingly careerist politicians. A new class of machine politicians. the "Dolist Managers" emerged, playing the role of king-makers by delivering huge blocks of votes to chosen candidates. Incumbent politicians soon realized that their continued incumbency was virtually assured with the managers' backing-and that the converse was also true. A politician targeted by the People's Quorum" (the official term for the alliance of Dolist managers) was doomed, and as the leaders of the Quorum became aware of their power, they selected specific politicians to punish as an example to all politicos of the power the Qwuorum represented.
Finally, as if to complete the system-wide outbreak of mass insanity, most of those who recognized that something was wrong embraced a "conspiracy theory" which assumed that their problems must result from someone's hostile machinations-probably those of the domestic "monied classes" or foreign industries who "dumped" their cheap, shoddy products on the Haven economy. Almost worse, there was an entrenched element of "this wouldn't be happening to us if we weren't somehow at fault" in the vast majority of mid 18th cnetury Havenite political and societal analysis and rhetoric, and this masochistic tendency only became more pronounced as the century wound to a close.
By 1750 pd, the Republic-no longer "The Republic of Haven," but now "The People's Republic of Haven"-had become the captive of a coalition of professional politicians (indeed, politicians who had never had and were not qualified for any other career) and the Quorum, aided and abetted by a morally and intellectually bankrupt academic community and a mass media philosophically at home with the Quorum's objectives and cowed (where necessary) by threats of blacklisting. The the Quorum could succeed in blacklisting journalists had been demonstrated in 1746 pd, in the case of Adele Wasserman, one of the last moderate journalists. Her moderation, which was actually a bit left of center by mid 17th century standards, was labeled "conservative" or, more frequently, "reactionary" by her 18th century contemporaries. She herselfwas called "an enemy of the common man," "a slave of the monied powers," and (most cutting slur then available on Haven) "a fiscal elitist," and her employer, one of the last independant news services, was pressured into terminating her contract (for "socially insensitive and inappropriate demagoguery") by means of an economic boycott, strikes, and governmental pressure. Her firing, followed by her subsequent relocation to the Kingdom of Manticore and a succesful career as a leading theorist of the Centrist Party, was the writing on the wall for any who had eyes. Unless something quite extraordinary intervened, the current Havenit system was doomed.
The problem was one which had arisen as long ago as Old Earth's Roman Empire: when power depends on "bread and circuses," those in power are compelled to provide ever greater largess if they wish to remain in power.In effect, the politicos required a bottomless and ever-filled public trough to pay off the Dolists and provide the graft and corruption to support the lives to which they themselves had become accustomed, and after almost two centuries of increasingly serious self-inflicted wounds, not even the once-robust Havenite economy could support the burden.It became apparent to the political managers that the entire edifice was in trouble: tax revenues had not matced expenditures in over 143 T-years; R&D was faltering as an increasingly politicized (and hence ineffectual) educational system purveyed the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo of collectivist economic theory rather than sound scientific training; and the decreasing numbers of truly capable industrial and technical managers produced by the system were incrfeasingly lured to other star systems whose economies allowed them to use their talents and enjoy the benefits thereof. The "Technical Conservation Act" of 1778, which revoked emigration visas for all research and production engineers by nationalizing their expertise "as a resource of the Republic," was intended to put a stop to that, but it could not reverse the fatal trends.
Real economic growth had stopped-indeed, the economy was contracting-but ever higher Basic Living Stipend payments were politically inescapable, and the stagflation which had resulted was becoming a self-sustaining reaction. In 1771pd, a highly classified economic report to the House of Legislatorspredicted that by the year 1870 the entire economy wouldcollapse in a disaster which would make Old Earth's Great Depression and the Economic Winter of 252 pd look like mild recessions. The Chiefs of Staff, apprised of the degree of collapse to be anticipated, warned that it would precipitate pitched warfare in the streetsas Haven's citizens fought for food for their families, for Haven had long since attained a population which could not feed itself without imports, and imports could not be paid for with a negative balance of trade."
The excerpt you have just read comes from a collection of stories entitled More than Honor. The story itself is called The Univers of Honor Harrington, and was written by David Weber as a work of science fiction.
For those of you who managed to read the entirety of the post, I hope you were able to see why I chose to write all this. The similarities between the path the Republic of Haven followed to its downfall, and the one our politicians are now sending us on are eerily similar. I can only hope that it's not too late to turn ourselves around, lest we become known as "The People's Republic of America".
"The People's Republic of Haven
Although the Haven System lies 667 light-years from old Earth, 155 light-years further distant than Manticore, the first shuttle landed on its habitable planet (also called Haven) on 1309 pd (post-diaspora), over a century before Manticore was settled. This was possible because of the fashion in which the introduction of the Warshawski Sail had revolutionized the logistics of colonization. Haven's day is 24.56 standard hours in length, divided into 13 months: 9 of 32 days each and 4 of 31 days each. The short months are the 3rd, 5th, 10th, and 12th. Every 4 years, the 3rd month s 32 days long.
Haven lay in a particularly attractive region, with an unusually high proportion of F, G, and K class stars, and the original expedition was estremely well financed as a joint venture by no fewer than eleven corporations based on member planets of the Solarian League.Moreover, the planet of Haven proved well named, for terrestrial life forms adapted to its envrionment with a minimum of difficulty and its climate was very nearly idyllic. With a powerful PR organization to tout its attractiveness, it exercised a magnetic effect on would-be colonists of the League and, with the availability of the new hypership technology grew at incredible speed. By 1430 pd, the Republic of Haven already boasted a planetary population of almosta billion and was beginning to mount colony expeditions of its own in what became known (despite the fact that six other systems in the region had been colonized before or almost simultaneously with Haven) as the Haven Quadrant.
By 1475, the Haven economy and government had proven themselves extremely efficient and effective. Politically, Haven was a representative democracy with a strong and politically active middle class, and its economic policy enshrined the principles of liberal capitalism with minimal government interference. Couple with the "jump start" provided by the colony's highly favorable initial circumstances, the combination of market efficiency and flexible government created a planetary standard of living at least as high as that of most Solarian League member worlds, and it became the envy and the pattern for every other world in the quadrant.
For the next two centuries, Haven continued to fulfill its promise, rising to a system population of almost seven billion and becoming a sort of interstellar Athens. The Haven Quadrant, although composed of independant worlds and star systems, rivaled the Solarian League for economic power, and it remained a vibrant and expansive entity, unlike the essentially satisfied and content League. Although the quadrant contained no wormhole junctions, it had access to the Manticore Junction (and, later, to the Erewhon Junction) and thence to the League, and there was every reason to believe that its expansion and prosperity would continue.
It did not. Precise identification of a specific event which caused the change within the quadrant is impossible, but in general terms it might be called over-achievemnet. The quadrant-and, in particular, Haven-had done too well. Its wealth was incalculable, and it began to seem unfair that that wealth was not more evenly distributed. In particular, capitalism, as always, had produced stratified classes, ranging from the extremely wealthy to the marginal and even sub-marginal, and if the members of Haven's "sub-marginal" class were immeasurably better off than, say the pre-Anderman citizens of New Berlin, they were not well off compared to their own affluent fellow citizens.
The Republic thus began to experiment , cautiously at first, with assistance and welfare programs to increase the opportunities of its less advantaged citizens. Unfortunately, what began as an experiment gradually became something else. Transfer payments became increasingly importantfor the maintenance of the industrial poor, requiring greater levies on the productive elements of society. Marginal industrial operations were shored up by protective tariffs, government loans, and outright grants to encourage full employment, which both undercut the overall efficiency and productivity of the industrial base, and encouraged inflation. Inflation further worsened the condition of the poor, requiring still higher transfer payments-payments which were soon adjusted for inflation on a mandated basis-and, as the network of assistance proliferated, it came to be seen as a fundamental "right" of those receiving the aid. By 1860 pd, Haven had issued its famous "Economic Bill of Rights", declaring that all of its citizens had an "unalienable right" to a relative standard of living to be defined (and adjusted as inflation required) by statute by the legislature.
In the process, the government had initiated an unending spiral of inflation, higher transfer payments, and increasing deficit spending. Moreover, it had (quite unintentionally, at least at first) undermined the fundamental strength of its own democracy. The middle class, the traditional backbone of the Republic, was under increasing pressure both from above and below, caught in the squeeze between an increasingly less productive economy and ever larger levies against its earnings to support the welfare system. Whereas the middle class had once seen the upper class as (at worst) essentially friendly rivals or (at best) allies in their joint prosperity, they came to see the wealthy, like the poor, as enemies, fighting over a dwindling prosperity. Worse, the middle class's traditional aspiration to upward mobility had become an increasingly remote dream, and it was much eaier to focus resentment on those who had more than the middle class than on those who had less-a tendancy which became ever more pronounced as "enlightened" commentators and academics secured dominant positions in the media and educational system.
Perhaps worst of all, was the emergence of the "Dolist" blocs. The Dolists (so called because they were "on the dole," receiving government assistance in greater or lesser degree) were still franchised voters and, quite logically, supported the candidates who offered them the most. It was a case of self-interest, and the Dolists' self-interest interlocked with that of increasingly careerist politicians. A new class of machine politicians. the "Dolist Managers" emerged, playing the role of king-makers by delivering huge blocks of votes to chosen candidates. Incumbent politicians soon realized that their continued incumbency was virtually assured with the managers' backing-and that the converse was also true. A politician targeted by the People's Quorum" (the official term for the alliance of Dolist managers) was doomed, and as the leaders of the Quorum became aware of their power, they selected specific politicians to punish as an example to all politicos of the power the Qwuorum represented.
Finally, as if to complete the system-wide outbreak of mass insanity, most of those who recognized that something was wrong embraced a "conspiracy theory" which assumed that their problems must result from someone's hostile machinations-probably those of the domestic "monied classes" or foreign industries who "dumped" their cheap, shoddy products on the Haven economy. Almost worse, there was an entrenched element of "this wouldn't be happening to us if we weren't somehow at fault" in the vast majority of mid 18th cnetury Havenite political and societal analysis and rhetoric, and this masochistic tendency only became more pronounced as the century wound to a close.
By 1750 pd, the Republic-no longer "The Republic of Haven," but now "The People's Republic of Haven"-had become the captive of a coalition of professional politicians (indeed, politicians who had never had and were not qualified for any other career) and the Quorum, aided and abetted by a morally and intellectually bankrupt academic community and a mass media philosophically at home with the Quorum's objectives and cowed (where necessary) by threats of blacklisting. The the Quorum could succeed in blacklisting journalists had been demonstrated in 1746 pd, in the case of Adele Wasserman, one of the last moderate journalists. Her moderation, which was actually a bit left of center by mid 17th century standards, was labeled "conservative" or, more frequently, "reactionary" by her 18th century contemporaries. She herselfwas called "an enemy of the common man," "a slave of the monied powers," and (most cutting slur then available on Haven) "a fiscal elitist," and her employer, one of the last independant news services, was pressured into terminating her contract (for "socially insensitive and inappropriate demagoguery") by means of an economic boycott, strikes, and governmental pressure. Her firing, followed by her subsequent relocation to the Kingdom of Manticore and a succesful career as a leading theorist of the Centrist Party, was the writing on the wall for any who had eyes. Unless something quite extraordinary intervened, the current Havenit system was doomed.
The problem was one which had arisen as long ago as Old Earth's Roman Empire: when power depends on "bread and circuses," those in power are compelled to provide ever greater largess if they wish to remain in power.In effect, the politicos required a bottomless and ever-filled public trough to pay off the Dolists and provide the graft and corruption to support the lives to which they themselves had become accustomed, and after almost two centuries of increasingly serious self-inflicted wounds, not even the once-robust Havenite economy could support the burden.It became apparent to the political managers that the entire edifice was in trouble: tax revenues had not matced expenditures in over 143 T-years; R&D was faltering as an increasingly politicized (and hence ineffectual) educational system purveyed the pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo of collectivist economic theory rather than sound scientific training; and the decreasing numbers of truly capable industrial and technical managers produced by the system were incrfeasingly lured to other star systems whose economies allowed them to use their talents and enjoy the benefits thereof. The "Technical Conservation Act" of 1778, which revoked emigration visas for all research and production engineers by nationalizing their expertise "as a resource of the Republic," was intended to put a stop to that, but it could not reverse the fatal trends.
Real economic growth had stopped-indeed, the economy was contracting-but ever higher Basic Living Stipend payments were politically inescapable, and the stagflation which had resulted was becoming a self-sustaining reaction. In 1771pd, a highly classified economic report to the House of Legislatorspredicted that by the year 1870 the entire economy wouldcollapse in a disaster which would make Old Earth's Great Depression and the Economic Winter of 252 pd look like mild recessions. The Chiefs of Staff, apprised of the degree of collapse to be anticipated, warned that it would precipitate pitched warfare in the streetsas Haven's citizens fought for food for their families, for Haven had long since attained a population which could not feed itself without imports, and imports could not be paid for with a negative balance of trade."
The excerpt you have just read comes from a collection of stories entitled More than Honor. The story itself is called The Univers of Honor Harrington, and was written by David Weber as a work of science fiction.
For those of you who managed to read the entirety of the post, I hope you were able to see why I chose to write all this. The similarities between the path the Republic of Haven followed to its downfall, and the one our politicians are now sending us on are eerily similar. I can only hope that it's not too late to turn ourselves around, lest we become known as "The People's Republic of America".
Monday, August 13, 2012
Welfare Reforms
With this being an election year, a lot of topics are being brought up by the politicians in an attempt to buy, er, gain votes in their favor. One such topic is welfare reform. While a lot of people couldn't care less, or even hope it never is, reformed, I believe that it is a good first step towards healing the economy and getting this nation back on track. However, it's going to take a lot more than just rhetoric and half measures to make it work. To that end, I've come up with a few ideas. Just a warning, if you happen to be on some form of welfare assistance and you're reading this, you most likely will not like me by the end of this.
First off, (and forgive me if there's already something like this in effect) I believe that there need to be some strict limits on what people can spend their welfare money on. Necessities only. Basic food items, staples, meals, a severely limited selection of snacks and treats, and clothing items, with a strict limit on how much can be spent on clothing to prevent those on welfare from purchasing high dollar items. No major electronics, no video game consoles, no plasma screen tv's, nothing that isn't absolutely necessary to help a person or a family survive. Now obviously, to do that, you would have to be able to track every expense made on the account. Go ahead. Set up a program so that a computer tracks every transaction made on a welfare account, flagging any purchases made on items that are not supposed to be purchased using welfare funds. And then, once a transaction is flagged, lock up the account until an investigator can call the authorized cardholder to find out what's going on.
I'm sure some of you would call that an invasion of privacy and a violation of some freedom or another. But I'll put it to you this way: the men and women who are living on welfare are essentially being given money by the taxpayers without ever being expected to pay it back. This money is to help them get back on their feet, and survive tough financial times, not to provide people who simply choose not to work with a means to buy themselves a bunch of cool new toys. So if it means that these folks have to give up the right to buy what they want without having someone look over their shoulders and tell them they can't buy something, so be it. They want government to be mommy and daddy, and give them an allowance, they damn well better expect to be treated like that's the way things are. But I digress.
Yet another idea I have is to create welfare specific stores. Essentially, they would be stores that only those on welfare could shop at, that would provide all the items approved for purchase with program funds, and nothing more. They would provide locally grown and made food items so as to help the economy as well as keep the cost lower. They would also provide locally made, off-brand clothing, again to support local business and keep costs down.They could even offer to hire some of the men and women who are on welfare, in order to help them acquire job skills they can use to get a better job elsewhere. It wouldn't be glamorous, but it would be a start.
My final idea is perhaps the most drastic of them all. It would be a means to help prevent fraud, as well as to better track the expenditures of those on the program. Simply put, all those who enroll in the welfare system and receive an account would be required to provide a full set of fingerprints at the time of enrollment. The enrollee's thumbprint would then be electronically linked to their card. Any time an enrollee would purchase an item with that card, they would be required to provide a thumb scan to verify they are who they say they are, and not someone who may have bought the card off of someone who wanted cash to circumvent the limitations of the card. The biometric readers would automatically be installed at the above mentioned welfare stores, and any other store chain which wished to participate in the welfare program would be provided those same readers, at the company's expense.
Is anyone out there screaming "how dare you" yet? I realize that these ideas seem a bit draconian, but the welfare system is a serious problem. There are people on it who don't necessary need it, and even those who do need it abuse it by purchasing items that it wasn't meant to be used for. Worse still is the fact that so many who do enroll in welfare see no reason to leave it. They live comfortable lives on the taxpayers' dime, and are perfectly happy to go on doing so until they die. Something must be done, and if that something is to make the lives of those on the program so uncomfortable that they feel forced to get a job, then it's worth it.
One little thing before I go. I realize a system like this could easily be abused by those in power. They could look at it and say "well if we've already got these folk being monitored, why not everyone else?". To them I say, it's because those of us not on the system are the ones who actually work for a living, and provide our own income. We are responsible for our own lives, and don't need the government to dictate what we can and cannot buy. But for those who think the welfare system is and should be the ticket to an easy life, they need to be made aware that they are sorely mistaken, and that abuse of a system meant to help those truly in need will not be tolerated.
Do I expect anyone in government will ever do anything like this? No. They're too worried about losing office to care about losing the nation.
First off, (and forgive me if there's already something like this in effect) I believe that there need to be some strict limits on what people can spend their welfare money on. Necessities only. Basic food items, staples, meals, a severely limited selection of snacks and treats, and clothing items, with a strict limit on how much can be spent on clothing to prevent those on welfare from purchasing high dollar items. No major electronics, no video game consoles, no plasma screen tv's, nothing that isn't absolutely necessary to help a person or a family survive. Now obviously, to do that, you would have to be able to track every expense made on the account. Go ahead. Set up a program so that a computer tracks every transaction made on a welfare account, flagging any purchases made on items that are not supposed to be purchased using welfare funds. And then, once a transaction is flagged, lock up the account until an investigator can call the authorized cardholder to find out what's going on.
I'm sure some of you would call that an invasion of privacy and a violation of some freedom or another. But I'll put it to you this way: the men and women who are living on welfare are essentially being given money by the taxpayers without ever being expected to pay it back. This money is to help them get back on their feet, and survive tough financial times, not to provide people who simply choose not to work with a means to buy themselves a bunch of cool new toys. So if it means that these folks have to give up the right to buy what they want without having someone look over their shoulders and tell them they can't buy something, so be it. They want government to be mommy and daddy, and give them an allowance, they damn well better expect to be treated like that's the way things are. But I digress.
Yet another idea I have is to create welfare specific stores. Essentially, they would be stores that only those on welfare could shop at, that would provide all the items approved for purchase with program funds, and nothing more. They would provide locally grown and made food items so as to help the economy as well as keep the cost lower. They would also provide locally made, off-brand clothing, again to support local business and keep costs down.They could even offer to hire some of the men and women who are on welfare, in order to help them acquire job skills they can use to get a better job elsewhere. It wouldn't be glamorous, but it would be a start.
My final idea is perhaps the most drastic of them all. It would be a means to help prevent fraud, as well as to better track the expenditures of those on the program. Simply put, all those who enroll in the welfare system and receive an account would be required to provide a full set of fingerprints at the time of enrollment. The enrollee's thumbprint would then be electronically linked to their card. Any time an enrollee would purchase an item with that card, they would be required to provide a thumb scan to verify they are who they say they are, and not someone who may have bought the card off of someone who wanted cash to circumvent the limitations of the card. The biometric readers would automatically be installed at the above mentioned welfare stores, and any other store chain which wished to participate in the welfare program would be provided those same readers, at the company's expense.
Is anyone out there screaming "how dare you" yet? I realize that these ideas seem a bit draconian, but the welfare system is a serious problem. There are people on it who don't necessary need it, and even those who do need it abuse it by purchasing items that it wasn't meant to be used for. Worse still is the fact that so many who do enroll in welfare see no reason to leave it. They live comfortable lives on the taxpayers' dime, and are perfectly happy to go on doing so until they die. Something must be done, and if that something is to make the lives of those on the program so uncomfortable that they feel forced to get a job, then it's worth it.
One little thing before I go. I realize a system like this could easily be abused by those in power. They could look at it and say "well if we've already got these folk being monitored, why not everyone else?". To them I say, it's because those of us not on the system are the ones who actually work for a living, and provide our own income. We are responsible for our own lives, and don't need the government to dictate what we can and cannot buy. But for those who think the welfare system is and should be the ticket to an easy life, they need to be made aware that they are sorely mistaken, and that abuse of a system meant to help those truly in need will not be tolerated.
Do I expect anyone in government will ever do anything like this? No. They're too worried about losing office to care about losing the nation.
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