In the Welfare State, Beggars Learn to Be Choosers -- Very Picky Choosers
The welfare state mentality is close to universal today. Half of Americans are on the dole to one degree or another.
The outlook of this society is one of entitlements. They are deliberately called entitlements by their defenders because "charity" sounds voluntaristic. These handouts are not voluntary, as both the legislators and the recipients know. The recipients of money or non-monetary handouts think of the arrangement as both moral and legal. Because the dole is promised to oldsters, every member of society is taught to look forward to his days of wine and roses, his golden years of automatic monthly money and nearly free medical care.
An attitude of a moral right to other people's money pervades what used to be called the lower ranks of society. Even where the legal right to other people's money does not exist, the moral right is thought to. Those who have lived in terms of government handouts expect handouts to continue on at least a part-time basis from anybody who possesses any advantage, earned or not, which they do not possess. It is not just that they want to get their hands into your wallet through the civil government. They want to get their hands into your wallet directly. But this proves more difficult. They cannot use coercion, so they have to use a sob story. They make up effective ones.
This is why there are deacons in churches. This is why there are screening committees in charitable organizations. The donors need people who are skilled in sorting out sob stories of pretended need from real stories of real need.
I used to attend an inner-city church for several years. The secretary knew everybody in the neighborhood. She would warn the pastor when some guy came looking for a handout. She would tell him which people were con artists, and which ones really had a pressing problem. We all need people like this in our lives. Until you get one, operate on this assumption: the person who wants the handout does not really need a helping hand. The person is just working the system, and you are the latest mark.
Charitable organizations are hit so often with sob stories that the screeners can categorize them. They have heard them all before. They know all the reasons offered for personal failure. They become skilled at separating people who need a hand from people who want a handout.
A SOB STORY
I was reminded of this recently when I received the following email.
I was doing a search for my daughter of online accredited colleges and came across your video when trying to look up reviews on Ashworth University. She's not a social kid and she's been doing Fisher online college for early childhood and she just informed me that she wants to switch her major to Psychology. She works as a FT nanny, 19, and lives on her own. We have qualified for some financial aid but she says she doesn't like the curriculum of Fishers. She has looked at Phoenix online and likes them but it's very expensive, and now she just sprung on me Ashworth Univerisity. She's a very naive girl and she's stressing me out. I was excited when you said go to my website for my free report to download and when going there, I saw that you want a fee for it. I can't afford this. I am a single mother trying to get my daughter to keep at it and pursue college and get a degree. Is this the only way to get your valuable information? I live in Massachusetts and my daughter has social anxieties so she prefers online college only. If you can help me in any way I would value that.
Let me break this down, point by point.
First, Fisher College online charges $325 per semester credit hour. (Note: Fisher College charges over $43,000 a year to parents of its on-campus students. This is about $1,430 per semester credit hour. So, $325 per semester credit hour is a real bargain -- one which parents of the on-campus students would be wise to take advantage of. If they don't, they are dumber than dirt, which in fact most parents are when it comes to the trifecta of after-tax economic loss: "room, board, and tuition." The really smart ones would pull their kids out, have them use AP exams and CLEP exams to quiz out of college courses, and get the price per semester unit down to about $35 for the first two years. To find out how to do this, click here.)
Who has been paying for this so far? Let me guess: Momma.
Second, her daughter now wants to major in psychology. Of 171 majors, Time magazine rates this as the lowest-paying of all.
Third, her daughter is a legal adult. She is 19 years old. She is still trying to con her mother by means of the usual guilt manipulation techniques into ponying up money to send her to college. She got some financial aid -- in fact, a discount with a nice name -- but she is not happy with the curriculum. She is a beggar, but she is a very careful chooser.
Fourth, Momma says that the daughter is a naïve girl, and she is stressing her mother out. On the contrary, the daughter is not naïve. The daughter has her mother's number. The daughter has obviously had her mother's number for a long, long time. Momma is naïve, not the daughter.
Fifth, Momma, being stressed out, wants to find a low-cost solution to her problem. She found my video, which has been online since 2006, on seven ways to beat the collegiate system. Anyone can watch that video and begin the first steps. You do not have to buy anything to begin. At the time, being somewhat naïve, I gave away a free report, about 60 pages long, on the details of various ways to beat the collegiate system. But then I figured out, from the fact that nobody ever thanked me for the free report, that nobody was taking advantage of it. So, I finally decided I would switch to a paid report. But I gave it away for a long time.
Sixth, Momma says she cannot afford to buy a report that will let her save $100, minimum, for every dollar that the report costs. Also, it comes with a money-back guarantee. In other words, it comes with no risk to the buyer. But Momma, who has access to high-speed Internet, pleads with me that she just cannot afford $97 to send her daughter to college.
Seventh, she says she is a single mother. This is not my problem. I did not get her pregnant. Trust me. I didn't. Maybe she never got married. Or maybe she married the wrong man, and he did not provide enough child support to enable her to save up enough money to send her daughter to college. This also is not my problem. Maybe she dumped him, or maybe he dumped her. In either case, this is not my problem. But Momma thinks I owe her free advice and a free report. Yet the information I supplied in my video is enough to save her or her daughter thousands of dollars.
This is not good enough for her. She is picky, picky, picky.
Why didn't she send the link to my video to her daughter? Why is she still making her daughter's decisions for her? Because she wants to retain control. She is exactly like the politicians, who fund the welfare state with taxpayers' money, and the tenured bureaucrats who administer it.
The welfare state is not about charity. It is about power.
MY RESPONSE
I replied: "I cannot help you with a naïve girl."
She soon responded: "That's a very nice and intellectual response." A snide response. It is typical of the welfare state mentality. You either fork over the handout, or you get a piece of the beggar's mind.
So, I responded: "I specialize in being nice and intellectual."
She replied: "Well that wasn't a very nice response. You offer something free to download then you go to site and you ask for money. That's just plain wrong! Good luck."
This woman has obviously used guilt manipulation on a lot of people for a long time. But when it comes to guilt manipulators, I am not an easy target. I hired David Chilton to write a book on this issue, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt-Manipulators (1981). You can download it free here. It is a great book.
JUST SAY NO. THAT'S WHAT I DO
This woman blames her daughter. Her daughter is naïve, she says. On the contrary, her daughter is a model of self-conscious realism. She has her mother's number, and she has been using it for a long time to get whatever she wants. She no doubt learned these techniques from Momma. Momma is still using them on strangers, although with decreasing effectiveness. She is trying to get her daughter off her back. I don't blame her at all. I merely blame her strategy: asking me to help her get her daughter off her back, free of charge.
Her daughter is not going to get off her back until Momma decides that enough is enough. Her daughter has spotted a mark, and she is going to continue to use it for as long as she can.
Momma says she cannot afford a manual on how to save money for sending her daughter to college cheaply, but the daughter is going to get her to pony up thousands of dollars to support a probably futile effort for her to earn an accredited degree, in anything, somewhere, free of charge to the daughter. The daughter is picky, picky, picky. She also knows Momma is going to come to her rescue. Momma always has.
I am not going to come to Momma's rescue. It's not my problem.
We must learn to recognize this more often. That's what charity screeners are for.