This is the Wrong Address for a Planned Dependency blog!

Recently, while I have been completely preoccupied, my blog has been taken over by comments asking me to write about planned dependency.  I am thrilled that my readership is expanding and I'm hopeful that my new crop of readers will hear my message.  But if you are looking for a plan to plan your dependency and set up permanent residence on Uncle Sam's Plantation, or if you are looking for ways to milk the system--especially if you lack complete integrity--I'm afraid you have arrived at the wrong address.  If you want to hear that message, Orthonomics is NOT the place for "Urbanonomics".

The Orthonomics blog is pretty much a broken record.  At Orthonomics, the message to be heard is one of (Hirschian or Maimonidian or Ben Ish Hai type) independence.  I believe in integrity: yashrut goes hand in hand with kashrut .  I believe in thrift, frugality, and wealth building.  I believe in prosperity, prosperity that can be enjoyed in this generation and can help the next generation gain their footing.

Furthermore, I am well aware that if one--especially a frum person who also benefits from the vast social and tzedakah networks of the community-- plans their alphabet soup and numbers of HUD, Section 8, Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, EITC, HEAP, FNS, Priority 7, child care vouchers, head start, government cell phones, etc, etc, etc, that they can be materially better off than they would be in lower paying jobs.

Nonetheless, I think choosing dependency is a terrible choice, and ultimately a choice that will destroy future generations, even if it "benefits" a current generation that is attracted to the shine of fool's gold.  A culture of dependency is destructive to the human spirit and to initiative.  It brings forth "learned helplessness" not "resourcefulness" as one of my new readers believes.  A culture of dependency is destructive to marriage, to family, and it is especially destructive to fathers/males and their offspring.

Ultimately, planned dependency is a wealth destroyer.  Time and energy are sapped to navigate properly through the great bureaucratic tangle of government benefits.  Wealth destruction is necessary to continue dependency.  One wouldn't think that poverty and consumerism would go together, hand and hand, but dependency changes the relationship between a person and money. You can't save too much and hold onto benefits, so you become a consumer.  You can't have too much investment income and keep your EITC credit if you go a dollar beyond the limit, so you avoid risk and production.


Case Worker:  two words my dependency advocates love and two words I never want to hear under my own roof.  Dependency does not allow you to live free, to attain independence.  Dependency does not promote self-reliance. Even if planned dependency gives your own brain some exercise, it does not give your children a yerusha of work ethic or nor does it provide role modeling for the next generation.

The frum world, a generation and a half into their planned dependency which many would like to increase and promote is just "playing house", shielded from real urban blight, urban (and rural) blight I recently had the opportunity to revisit.  Our poor have access to vast social networks.  Our poor live side-by-side with wealthy people.  Our poor often have two parents, often both professionally successful.  Not so the case among the 2nd and 3rd generation dependent.

I know that poverty is a struggle (and I don't want to undermine that struggle or be insensitive to it), but our poor are generally struggling alongside a vast middle class.  But, I would predict, that making glamorous dependency as the "solution" to our struggles (should the trend hold) will leave a future generation without this network and is a terribly destructive, selfish, and short-sighted solution.  Your grandchildren will not suffer poverty in a protective cocoon and that is yet another reason to value independence.

Once again, welcome to Orthonomics.  If you want a message of planned dependency, start your own blog.  And if you want to obtain that through questionable or even fraudulent means, don't try to educate others on my blog.