I received numerous responses to my previous article and was impressed by the encouragement, constructive criticism, and questions I received. I would like to thank everybody for their friendly welcome and advice.

There were three main questions/comments that you brought up repeatedly.

The first obvious question is, "What, was I doing working at Wal~Mart with a college degree?" I've attempted to answer that question here.

The second was that, my behavior, even though they agreed with me, was inappropriate.

And I agree. It was inappropriate of me to have such a conversation in a cashier/customer relationship -- especially since that customer was actually using E.B.T.  I realize that, as a sinful human being, when a person is conflicted about something, he might tend to go about it in the wrong way. The proper response (as Gary North said) would have been to quit, before I got in trouble.

Some of you thought I was overgeneralizing -- that perhaps people didn't agree with me as much as I thought; but I actually had many conversations with cashiers. Every cashier and most of the C.S.M.s I'd talked to, agreed with me. (The C.S.M.s are the people in the bright red smocks that help the cashiers out sometimes.)

Several of you thought I was perhaps a bit heartless, and wanted me to realize the world isn't black and white, and some people do actually need assistance. Well, I do realize there are a few people who use welfare responsibly. I don't want to appear heartless. My wife's mother was one of these individuals. (I mentioned her and her family briefly.) She only bought cheap raw meats and vegetables, and pasta. They made their own food, almost from scratch, and used it very responsibly. When Amy's mom got remarried, she lost half of their assistance: way more then her new husband, Jerry, was bringing it. However, he wasn't willing to "co-habitat" as he believed it was immoral. My wife recalls the event as very distressing to her.

She saw it as the government encouraging immorality.

Now as libertarians, I understand that we would want the government to be neutral and not encourage things one way or the other. There have been several articles about how government should get out of marriage altogether, but since government is
involved with it, it's bound to encourage things one way or another. I would personally prefer that if government must encourage something, that it encourage upright, moral behavior, instead of immoral behavior. The family as a whole was frustrated, because as they were trying to turn their life around, they lost most of their help and had to start all over. Later, in conversations with the step-dad, Jerry, I learned that, they had to make sure they didn't make too much, or they would loose half of the SSI for Jeremy's cerebral palsy. He said, "The government encourages slothfulness." They honestly couldn't afford, to make a little bit more, so they had to wait until they got a big break (their mother finally got an excellent job), to get out from under that government control. Not everybody however, has the luxury of finding a big break, and for those people, it's impossible to gradually move upward. You've either got to make yourself better in one big leap, or you're trapped.

Once you get on welfare it's almost impossible to get off it. A lot of people here at Lew Rockwell, detest government charity, simply because it's forceful, and it makes hardworking Americans "donate" to a cause at gunpoint. And frankly I agree, but to
me that's not the real issue. If you say that to some random person on the street, they won't understand. The real issue to me is
that government charity simply does not work. My point is that those very few people who use welfare responsibly, could be
better helped by private charity and more dignified doing so. Obviously I don't know how few use it properly because my
observation of E.B.T. customers is skewed (One reason is that people who abuse the system simply frequent more often then those who don't, but there could be other reasons.). Regardless, private charity could easily help those people better.

Here in Sioux Falls, SD.; there is a place known as "the Banquet." It's a charity free food service, put on by various local groups in the community who take turns. People low on money can get at least 1 decent meal a day. We have a decent size Habitat for Humanity group here. There would be more of charities such as this, and others, if we weren't forced to pay for food stamps, and government subsidized housing through our taxes.

Private charity's do everything cheeper. They have to, if they don't, they won't get donations. A good 60-70% of the money we pay in for taxes gets eaten up by middle men before it even gets to the welfare recipient. It's hard for a private charity to get donations if they have higher then 5% overhead. Think of how much more good (and less bad) our money would be doing if the government wasn't involved in charity.

For those of you who have had to use government charity as a necessary evil and have used it responsibly and wisely, thank you, I appreciate it.

Tracy Saboe