It’s fun to pick on fat people. They’re easier targets because they can’t run fast. But I’ve got your back, guys – especially since Rep. John Read, R-Miss., recently introduced legislation to deny fast food service to obese people. If you’re fat, I suggest bulimia, not government intervention. What follows a ban on fast food for the overweight will be a ban on all unhealthy foods and beverages for all people. Then the government will outlaw cigarettes, confiscate our guns and allow gay people to marry their pets. Well, you get the idea. The point I’m trying to make is Americans are becoming too dependent on government – and the last thing we need is a daddy-state limiting our right to privacy. From healthy dieting to welfare to unemployment to affordable housing and beyond, Americans are too needy. As a Christian, my main gripe with welfare is its elimination of the prospect of personal, deliberate charity. If the government requires forfeiture of a portion of individual income for others’ living expenses, I believe fewer people will feel obliged to make charitable contributions. Most current reform proposals are deficient in encouraging work, reducing poverty and strengthening the family, according to an analysis on welfare by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan policy research group. The study recommends cutting off cash assistance and shifting responsibility to states as solutions to dependency created by welfare. Regardless, if the poor took more responsibility in finding work, the problem might not be so widespread. The Heritage Foundation explained in a Jan. 5, 2004, article that the reasons there are so many poor children in America is because parents don’t work enough, and fathers are often absent. The average poor household works fewer hours than I did my sophomore year of high school, which is 16 hours per week, according to the article. If this same household worked 40 hours per week, almost 75 percent of children living in poverty would be moved above the poverty line. But we can’t blame poor people and fat kids alone. Middle and upper class income families are equally accountable. California’s state government will have the power to “override customers’ wishes” in regulating temperatures in homes and businesses by controlling thermostats to combat electricity shortages, according to a Jan. 11 New York Times article. That reminds me of a certain dystopian literary prediction. Perhaps the best example of dependency is the nation’s housing crisis. Countrywide, the nation’s largest independent mortgage lending institution, has come under fire from the FBI for securities fraud in an investigation of the mortgage crisis. The company is being probed for misrepresenting “its financial condition and the soundness of its loans in securities filings,” according to a March 9 Reuters.com article. Countrywide allowed people to purchase home loans they couldn’t afford to pay. It’s also being investigated for “steering minority borrowers into more expensive loans,” according to Reuters. The rising interest rates forced people to pay unaffordable notes, which meant lenders like Countrywide were expected to pay with bank loans. In response to the housing crisis, the government proposed ways to delay foreclosures. Lenders are pushing for more lenient foreclosure rules to maintain affordable housing. Options include refinancing with better rates or extending loans. Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo wants to raise loan limits on federal home loan banks to help fund more loans and encourage more home sales, according to an Oct. 30, 2007, article in USA Today. President Bush recently signed a stimulus package to boost the economy. The impact of the package is questionable, as evidenced by an poll that showed only 19 percent of Americans planned to spend their rebate checks. The president and Congress can control how much taxpayers receive in the stimulus package, but they have no control over how Americans will use this money. So it comes down to the American people – not the American government – to fix the problem. I wish I could remember who said, “There is no self-governing society without self-governing people” – because whoever did was right. The lending crisis could lead to widespread home foreclosure and the closing of many big lenders and banks across the nation. This is a major sector of the economy, and if housing collapses, other industries could follow. USA Today cites the merge of the housing and credit crises as one reason for the nation’s current path toward recession. Hurricane Katrina taught us that once people begin to forfeit responsibility to the government, they lose their ability to fend for themselves.
—-Contact Daniel Lumetta at [email protected]