Get to Work!

For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either. For we hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to work in quiet fashion and eat their own bread. ~ 2 Thessalonians 3:10-12

43 million Americans are on food stamps right now. That is almost 1 in 7. This is a very sad state in my opinion. President Obama just gave a speech on his ideas for “fixing” the budget deficit. While I don’t agree with his definition of fix, that’s not really the point. The point is that we have gotten to this huge deficit in the first place. We continue to pay for all kinds of things we simply can’t afford.

Many of the things we are paying for are entitlements. We have food stamps, welfare, multiple years worth of unemployment, Medicare, Medicaid, social security and more. We continue to fund everything even though we can’t afford it. This year we are going to spend more than 1.5 trillion MORE than we are going to bring in from taxes.

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t be spending any of this money, certainly we should, but we have to get it to the point where we are spending less than we bring in. We can’t as a country expect everything to be given to us. We have to stop expecting the government to take care of us. That isn’t what it is there for.

As Dave Ramsey would say, you have to leave the cave, go kill something, and bring it back home. Get to work and start taking care of yourself and your family. Pay for your house, your healthcare, and your food. I understand having the safety nets in place. That’s fine, but 3 years of unemployment is unacceptable. The are jobs to be had if you get out there and look. Much of the time it is just a case of people not wanting to take less pay than they used to make. At some point you have to get back out there and work your way up the ladder again.

Our budget problems are huge right now, and nobody has the will to change them in Washington. We need to have the will to fix the problems on Main Street. Get back to work and take care of yourself. Then vote all the incumbents who don’t understand that you have to spend less than you earn out of Washington.