I have lived long enough to have seen the good, the bad, and now, the ugly of my America. During the ’30s, I saw people being evicted from their homes, and my heart ached for them. Welfare wasn’t the answer then because self-respect and pride were still in vogue. I don’t know how those families made it, but they found a way back.
In today’s world of handouts and section eights, the hoi polloi think the government is their special bank and if they don’t want to work they have a “right”  to expect the government to support them in the manner they think is due them. And the government agrees, so we have generation after generation expecting Uncle Sam to be their special bank.
[Having] pride and dignity is a thing for the “ignorant” who have never learned how to cheat and lie for their benefit. I worked for 35 years and paid towards my retirement from my first payroll check. There were days when my children could have used a new pair of shoes, but that money was taken out of my check by my government’s demand that I contribute towards my future retirement. I learned to manage, and when I finally retired and received my pension check, I realized how fortunate I was to have done without a few things sooner so I could reap my rewards later.
Now, the retirement fund (Social Security) to which all working men and women had to contribute has been savaged by my government to pay for all manner of subsidies, and our retirement has been cut out of cost-of-living adjustment for two straight years while the giveaway programs continue to expand.
Let’s give America back to the working American and go back to the days when people of good will had self-respect and tried to do good things for themselves and their families and weren’t too dependent on the government to help them, unless if was for just a leg up to get them going again after a misfortune.
Looking to the government for a life of give-me is the ruination of a government and the recipient.
Vivian C. Nelson
Long Beach
