Monday, March 22, 2010

Response to Miss Julia Wayne's "Poverty.. America... Welfare"

Brittany Liebenow

22 March 2010

Response to Miss Julia Wayne's "Poverty.. America... Welfare"

I agree with Miss Julia Wayne's assertions that capitalism in America fuels people to succeed, and that lack of success in our great nation leads to a degraded, looked-down-upon feeling. I can personally vouch for this. I always strive to push myself to be as close to perfect as I possibly can, and when I come up short of excellence, I often feel depressed and worthless.

Miss Wayne's description of the exceptions to common stereotypes are also very true. The idea that high achieving people are not necessarily the most hardworking and that hardworking people are not necessarily high achieving is her exception that I find to be most personally true. This example everyone can relate to; there is always that one test, project, competition, or any other evaluation that you work yourself to the bone over only to receive essentially a punishment while that kid next to you scrapes up something in ten minutes and winds up with a perfect score and the praise to wear with it. This ties in quite nicely with a true lesson of life stated in its own beautiful little paragraph: "The problem is, how is it possible to tell the difference between who deserves to be successful and who doesn’t? It’s not."

The part of Miss Wayne's post that I agree with the most is the section on welfare. She essentially states that welfare is not a good idea because it degrades peoples' worth. She also does not agree with simply throwing money at a problem; Miss Wayne believes that real volunteer work is the real way to help poverty. I could not agree more with these opinions. Supplying the money to do things means nothing unless you can supply people to carry out the benefits the money can provide, just as Miss Wayne explains having a school with no teachers does not do any good. Also, only donating money distances the donors from the actual problem and places them on a pedestal above the poorer masses. This leads to the creation of a judgmental upper class that provides money to the poorer people that have been inhumanely stripped of their human value. These people then walk down the street judging people left and right as, Miss Wayne puts cleverly, a "heroin junkie" or a "prostitute."

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