The $50 Lesson
Recently, while I was working in the flower beds in the front yard, my neighbors stopped to chat as they returned home from walking their dog.
During our friendly conversation, I asked their 12 year old daughter what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day.
Both of her parents - liberal Democrats - were standing there, so I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?"
She replied, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people."
Her parents beamed with pride!
"Wow...what a worthy goal!" I said. "But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that!" I told her.
"What do you mean?" she replied.
So I told her, "You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and trim my hedge, and I'll pay you $50. Then you can go over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house."
She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"
I said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."
Her parents aren't speaking to me.
And the author leaves it there, smugly letting the world know that, unlike these pie in the sky socialist liberals, good old Puritan ethics and Republican "work for your own living, I don't owe you anything" ethics rule...
Well .. As Paul Harvey used to say "And Now for the Rest of the Story"
...
Well the little girl took me up on my offer, and went to get the homeless guy over at the supermarket. She was so excited at the prospect of helping out the homeless she could barely wait.
She returned 20 minutes later with not one, but 5 men in tow - you see with what the bank foreclosures and jobs losses caused by the Banks excesses and government bailouts of big companies to the tune of trillions of dollars, they had not only lost their homes, but their jobs as much of our local economy had turned to dust.
The five men immediately set to work, and 15 minutes later, their work completed, thanked me for my $50. It was late and the day and they disappeared to where ever it is homeless people disappear to at night. You know, as long as it's not around me, I don't much mind it.
Well, do you believe it, the very next day they showed up with the little girl again asking for more work - you see I was the first person who had offered them a job in weeks, turns out they'd been looking, and they were eager to do more.
I had to turn them away, but suggested they check with my neighbors to see if they needed some help.
I watched them the rest of the day looking for good honest work up and down the block. Between the 5 of them they found one other homeowner that needed help who paid them $25 (that's $5 apiece!) to clear out her back yard of a pile of rubble, mend her aged fence and paint it, and mow her front lawn.
At the end of the day the little girl came back to me and asked:
"Where are the jobs for these homeless men who are so ready and able to work?"
I told her that it was a matter of supply and demand, that she'd learn about these things when she got older.
She looked at me with her big eyes and said
"Thanks, I knew I couldn't be a Republican - your ideas don't solve real people's problems," and went home to her Liberal Democratic parents.
The moral of the story is that it's easy to make judgements and stereotype people from the comfort of your lounge chair after a day's hard work you have as a result of the good college education you could afford because your parents had money and access, but it's hard work, taking really compassionate people who are willing to look beyond kitschy sayings and simplistic pablum and employ compassion, to see how we can solve these things.
And don't bring my daughter into this - they actually know better. I know. I raised them to care about their fellow man.
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