TROUBLING
The great motivational writer, Napoleon Hill, wrote that “Nature does not look favorably on something for nothing.” In other words, no lasting good comes from giving people money they didn’t earn. Mr. Hill continues, “When any individual reconciles himself to the state of mind wherein he is willing to accept largesse from the government instead of supplying his needs through personal initiative, that person is on the road to decay.”
More than anything the recipients of permanent welfare escape the economic struggle that helps to build character. The setbacks and disappointments of life that we all suffer through have an equivalent benefit. These negative experiences develop self-reliance and self-discipline. In that way, we overcome our worries and fears, learn persistence and emerge victorious through our struggles. We grow as we overcome difficulties. However, if we quit at the first sign of defeat and insist that we be taken care of from the public treasury, we forego the necessary lessons to live a successful life.
We now have millions of people in America who live off the government. Many of them are on a self-destructive path of addiction, crime and shiftlessness. They are harvesting the opposite outcome from those who overcome their economic struggles and succeed. Napoleon Hill wrote about how this effects a country, “When a majority of the people of any nation give up their inherited prerogative right to make their own way through struggle, history shows clearly that the entire nation is in a tailspin of decay that inevitably must end in extinction.”
