America: Rewarding People for Their Failures

I never thought that I would see the day when I would write a piece about striving to fail. Yet, as I look at how the world operates around me or as I pay attention to media, I receive daily reminders that we are at the point where so many are rewarded for not taking care of business-personally, corporately, or within grander systems.

In America, our government seems to now reward people for failure. On the other hand, those who go above and beyond, to live their lives not feeding off of the government teat and find it distasteful to do so, are seen as unsympathetic, unforgiving, or even diabolical.

As children, many of us remember the simple lessons our parents taught us, which spoke of how we should live our lives, treat others, and conduct business. Some of us fell asleep as they read us bedtime stories--Aesop's Fables--each ending with "...and the moral to the story is..."

Who can forget the lesson taught by "The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg," where a husband and wife had a goose which laid a golden egg every day? Their greed led them to believe that if they killed the goose, they would be able to get rich faster because the goose would be filled with an entire supply of gold. Of course, when they killed the goose and opened it up, it bled and died like any other goose. And the moral of this story is two-fold: If you are greedy and want too much, you will lose everything as you destroy things which are good, and you must think before you act foolishly.

Some of us learned proverbs from our religious, spiritual and cultural upbringings, which make up the fibers of our moral being. One such proverb states: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Does this really need an explanation?

When did we stop teaching our children these common sense approaches to living life, making decisions, or running a business? When did we make the shift to a belief that no matter what we have done with our lives, we have a right to stand and cry about our plight with our hands held out, expecting that we have no responsibility or accountability to those doing the giving? Since when have we insisted that the handout we get is "not good enough"?

We all have gone through times in our lives where we have found ourselves in dire circumstances-we go through divorces, lose our jobs, deal with medical issues, enter into bad business partnerships, or any number of life's challenges-where we need assistance to get us through the roughest periods. We used to believe that it took swallowing our pride to ask for a hand-up to provide us temporary help until such time we could get back on our own feet again, and living as productive members of society by working, paying taxes, and feeling good about what we provide to our families and ourselves by the very nature of our hard work.

We have come to a point where we, as individuals, a government, and a society, have made a shift from being resourceful and working hard for what we have into buying into a sophomoric mindset of instant gratification. We want what we want, and others are obligated to take care of us rather than our taking the responsibility to take care of our obligations. We have become short-sighted and our behavior has followed suit. We want immediate reward, and a quick bandage fix to cover up the real ills which will nearly always end in disastrous results.

Today when someone loses a job, there is unemployment insurance to collect. Many of those who collect unemployment do so with every intention of milking the program for as long as they can, reporting the minimum search requirements weekly, and often falsifying information.

Stay in the unemployment line long enough for the benefits to run out, and there may be any number of programs for which you can apply and qualify for welfare benefits. Your level of accountability will be to simply show up for a monthly check-in with a caseworker who works for a governmental agency and will stay employed as long as there are people who need to check in.

Don't forget to apply and qualify for tax credits, paid for by those who are sometimes working two or three minimum wage jobs to pay rent and feed their families, and paying their fair share of taxes to keep someone else in free, unearned money. Again, there are some who will feel absolutely no guilt as they scam the system, even by falsifying self-employment records, or ask others to do so, to supply "proof" that some sort of income has been earned to receive tax credits that, in reality, are not legally warranted.

There was a time when those who needed assistance were given "food stamp coupons." Today's cash and food assistance is often delivered on an Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card, an identification card for the Food Stamp Program. On the back is a magnetic strip that works in the machine at the grocery store. When going through the checkout line, the EBT card is "swiped" through the machine, followed by entering a 4-number PIN code. The cost of the food is automatically subtracted from the food stamp account--exactly like a bankcard.

Although this certainly makes some sense in today's electronic payment world, we certainly want those who spend much of life living on the dole to be able to do so with dignity. No one should have to feel the embarrassment of standing in line tearing coupons from a payment booklet. Then of course, without the "bankcard," it's not nearly as easy to give the card and PIN code away for friends to use, or even to "sell" these non-transferable benefits to someone else for their use. After all, don't we all deserve to screw over the government system?

Remember the Latin phrase, "Caveat emptor" --"Let the buyer beware"--which assumes that a consumer take responsibility before they solidify financial decisions? Don't worry about it today, because our government will bail out consumers who cannot pay their mortgage loans, and bail out corporations going out-of-business, all because these folks shouldn't have to take responsibility for their bad decisions.

Do any of these situations really make sense? It seems that we have numerous incentive programs in place nowadays to reward a society of whiners who exercise foolish behavior and bad decision-making. The moral of today's story is: "If you are failing in your life, the government will give you...(fill in the blank)..." This is true for the foolish poor, the foolish middle-class, the foolish rich, and the foolish government decision-makers.

So what do we make of those people who are successful in life by working hard, living within their means, and finding ways to be frugal in personal finances or in their business practices? What of those who sacrifice what they want "right now" for what they will achieve by patiently planning for later? What do we think of those people who are "successful" in others' eyes?

So much of success today is seen through a lens of suspicion. The "haves" must be doing something at the expense of the "have nots." Those who work hard are seen as disgusting and greedy. Successful individuals and corporations are expected to pay increasingly higher and higher tax rates as a way to attempt to level the economic playing field for all of society. We complain about capitalistic corporations outsourcing work to other countries because of run-away tax increases, as we forgive others who cheat on their taxes because they spout socialistic commentary. Successful people are becoming increasingly vilified by those who believe that these employers and employees should be penalized for their hard work, determination, and the belief in "the American Dream."

Has socialism become the reward for society's losers? Have we really come to a point in our country we hate success and celebrate failure? Do we really believe that we are no longer capable of being resourceful, productive members of society?

Many of us also remember Pavlov's Dog and the lesson of conditioned response, which tells us that when we reward behavior, you will get more of the same behavior. It doesn't require using any critical thinking skills, but simply requires a reaction to whatever situation is presented. It then makes sense that whatever behavior is not rewarded will be decreased. It doesn't take higher education to learn this lesson; it's actually quite simple.

Our parents and grandparents struggled to raise responsible children with some common sense to living life. They taught the values of hard work, determination, living within one's means, resourcefulness, and accountability by setting a good example to follow. They often shared these lessons through the use of stories and proverbs. They raised us to continue to strive for success as we learned from life's failures.

Yet today, it is becoming increasingly evident that our society is behaving as a conditioned pack of greedy, ravenous, drooling dogs poised to bite off the hands which feed them, as our parents scratch their heads and ask, "Where did we go wrong?"

Isn't it about time we get back to common sense values and reward those who will work to be successful in life?