The Kingdom Belongs to Such as These

My kid's school, Walter J. Mitchell Elementary, are the Bulldogs, and so they have a behavioral reinforcement program called Bark.  You get Barks for barking good behavior, for being kind and generous and helpful, for doing something that is above and beyond basic expectations. At the end of the year they have a carnival where kids can "spend" their Barks.  Even big old fifth graders get pretty excited about earning and redeeming their Barks.  This morning, Jack and Cate were talking about the impending carnival and Cate said that one of her friends didn't have any Barks, so the class "was nice" to her and let her earn all twelve of some extra credit Barks.  They didn't give her some of their Barks, they just let her take an opportunity to earn some for herself, because fourth graders recognize income inequality when they see it.
And this is obviously merit based, everyone had an equal opportunity to earn Barks, and most kids had many that they earned by doing good things.  But someone did not have any, and fourth graders know that's an injustice, even if the field was level, even if she really didn't earn any, they knew she deserved a chance to get in on the fun.  Michele said, "Hey, that's Socialism!"
And I said, "Right, and it works!"  But technically we're both wrong, it's not Socialism, it's just basic human decency.  Socialism or Communism would be where the kids formed a collective and decided what sort of things would earn Barks and also how many Barks would be given out to each person as long as they played their assigned role in the collective.  This wasn't that, this was good old charity, but not just alms to the poor, rather an opportunity for someone who had been left out to get back in.
So here's where a nice story about my kids starts to get a little hot and prophetic.  I hear all the time about the evils of welfare and public assistance, not about how it's inefficient and how it doesn't do enough for the people who desperately need it, but about how it's a blight on our society and creates a nation of takers and drains the middle class of much needed income.  I hear this from good people.  From Christian people, who have, or should have read Matthew 25 at some point.
People, we need to learn from fourth graders.
Let's talk numbers for just a second.  Depending on who you talk to, and what lens you use to look at the budget, entitlement programs do, in fact take up a lot of the federal budget, however, when you look at what those entitlement programs are... well the picture changes.  Most of what sometimes gets lumped in with "welfare" is actually Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the percentage of total spending that goes to public assistance programs is around 9 percent, and only a fraction of that is actually doled out to people who collect welfare.  The next time someone tells you something like: "my tax dollars are going to support people who just won't work."  Refer them to this handy little thing, an itemized tax receipt generator that will tell them exactly how much of their taxes go to what.
Let's talk about the average income tax liability of around $11000 per year.  That's decidedly middle class, probably a homeowner, most likely dual income family for people with normal jobs.  There are two separate line items that we can add up to get a picture of how much "the takers" are actually costing the average family: temporary assistance for needy families under the unemployment and labor category (welfare), in this case the bill comes to a whopping $70.29, or what my family of four usually spends to go out to a fairly nice restaurant.  Second, under the food and agriculture section, we find the SNAP program, food stamps, which costs us $329.03... out of $11,000.  $400 per year for the part of the safety net that is constantly demonized by folks as sucking the life out of the American Dream.
Yes, when you look at the total amount spent on entitlements, it's a bit staggering, but listen up middle class Americans, don't buy the mythology that the rich dudes are trying to sell you, most of those entitlements are in your best interest, and have nothing to do with "welfare queens" and people who refuse to work.  Most of the poor people, particularly those who qualify for SNAP and other programs like it, work pretty freaking hard.  I happen to know one rather well.  The myth is that "those" people are taking our "hard earned" money and living high on the hog, but it just isn't so.  First of all, they're not taking that much of our money in the first place, second of all most of what they do get is in the form of bare necessities, food, clothing, housing and utilities.  Maybe some of them do make bad decisions about how and what to spend, but you need to know that being poor is expensive, and difficult, and believe me, it's a rare anomaly of a person who says, "yeah, this is good enough for me (and my kids)."
Want to know who is really sucking the life out of the American Dream?
Don't tell the fourth grade, they already think grown-ups are stupid.