Every now and then my friends like to wind me up by sending me a provocative bit of right-wing propaganda. It’s like chumming the waters for fish – they just chuck it out there and then watch the fish rising to the bait. One of my golfing buddies sent me a document recently. And in this case his timing was perfect. I’d been planted in my La-Z-Boy for about a week with a miserable cold, so I had lots of time on my hands to look at what he sent. (Therefore, what follows could legitimately be described as the product of a sick mind – you can judge for yourselves). Here’s what he sent:

“The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living”
Saskatchewan Population is 48% native … This was written by a 21-yr. old female who gets it. It’s her future she’s worried about and this is how she feels about the social
welfare system that she’s being forced to live in! These solutions are just common sense in her opinion.

Put me in charge of WINZ food grants. I’d get rid of cash for potato chips or chocolate, just money for 50kg bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge of Healthcare. The first thing I’d do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then, we’ll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and document all tattoos and piercings. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, smoke or get tats and piercings, then get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your “home” will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

Put me in charge of compulsory job search. In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a “government” job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22-inch rims and low-profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good.”

Before you write that I’ve violated someone’s rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules.

Before you say that this would be “demeaning” and ruin their “self-esteem,” consider that it wasn’t that long ago that taking someone else’s money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self-esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

AND While you are on Gov’t subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes, that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest…. You will vote for a ‘welfare’ Govt. only. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov’t welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.

Now, if you have the guts – PASS IT ON…I DID!!!”

Now the very last thing I want you to do with that script is to pass it on. Here are some of the things that are wrong with it.

First, let’s talk about the source for this document. It is described as having been written by a 21-year-old female who “gets it”. In the version passed along to me, it is implied that she is a member of Saskatchewan’s Native community. I found a version in which she was described as a young Zulu woman running for the presidency of South Africa. In a third version, she is from New Zealand’s native community. They are all false attributions. It was first published in the Waco Texas Chronicle Herald in 2011 and was written by Alfred W. Evans, a 56-year-old resident of Gatesville, Texas, who wrote a letter to the editor hoping to get others incensed about welfare abuse.

Second, It’s racist. It’s attributed to a young member of a minority community (female, indigenous). The apparent message is “good for her, she’s trying to break out of her useless, welfare sucking culture”. The less obvious message, and the one that the author really wants us to understand, is that the target community is part of a useless welfare sucking culture.

Third, it’s full of misinformation.

Saskatchewan’s indigenous community is not 49% of the Saskatchewan community. Per the 2021 culture, about 17% of Saskatchewan people identify as indigenous.

The opening statement “The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are outnumbered by those who vote for a living” was not part of Mr. Evans’ rant. It was extracted from an article titled “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire,” by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, in an article written after the 2012 election. It’s a catchy little thought isn’t it – that working men and women are being out-voted by people who are on welfare? 

The truth however is that the unemployment rate in Canada is running about 6% or less and the fraction of the population on some form of welfare assistance is about 5%. So we pay taxes are not being outvoted by welfare recipients. The reason we have social assistance programs isn’t that the greedy worthless people on welfare are forcing us to do what we wouldn’t otherwise do. We have social assistance programs because that’s the kind of society we want to have and although we grumble at high taxes, at some level we understand that there are a lot of people out there who need help. A good part of the reason that Canada does well in country by country rankings of Quality of Life is that we care for and look after the less fortunate.

“Put me in charge of WINZ food grants”. (WINZ food grants are the New Zealand food support program, not Saskatchewan’s) I’d get rid of cash for potato chips or chocolate, just money for 50kg bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job. In a country with a developing obesity problem, (and next door to a country with a huge obesity problem) I sympathize with the thought that we would hate to see welfare dollars spent on junk food. But there’s a better answer, which I proposed about two years ago, and that is to expand the “sin tax” currently applied to tobacco and alcohol, and apply it to a fairly broad category of junk foods.

“The first thing I’d do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations.” According to Kettunen, Michel & Peterson in the book “Race, Ethnicity and Welfare States: An American Dilema”, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an editorial in 1990, right after Norplant birth control implants were approved by the US FDA, arguing that the way to reduce the number of black children living in poverty was to reduce the number of black children. So, they proposed mandatory birth control or sterilization for welfare recipients, the majority of whom were in the black population. The Inquirer was forced to publish an apology, but the idea apparently refuses to die. Do we really want to live in a society that would enforce sterilization as a means to attack poverty? 

“Your “home” will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.” So, in the society envisaged by this writer, being on welfare deprives you of the right to privacy and the freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. Nice!

If you are on welfare, you will report to a “government” job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. The problem with this statement is that it has been tried, and for the most part, it doesn’t work. A document written for the UK Dept for Work and Pensions had this to say about the Canadian experience with “workfare. “There is little evidence that workfare increases the likelihood of finding work. It can even reduce employment chances by limiting the time available for job search and by failing to provide the skills and experience valued by employers.”

While you are on Gov’t subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! This statement pretty much captures the author’s view of a person on welfare. The person driven onto the welfare rolls, no matter what tale of misfortune might lie behind that person, has no real rights, and no claim to equality with the elitist bastard writing that tract.

What the writer has done is to progress from telling us that he’d like to limit the social safety net, to telling us how we should live, to telling us how we must live. It is an exemplary reflection of the populist’s progression from enlisting the support of those frustrated with some narrow issue to the endorsement of a complete wide ranging autocracy. And let’s be real – enforcement of non-voluntary sterilization, home inspections and the elimination of the right to vote are the hallmarks of autocratic dictators.

Here’s my message to those of you have managed to read this far. I quite understand that taxes are frustrating. I agree that welfare systems are subject to some levels of abuse. And your view of how wide and deep our social safety net might be may well differ from mine, and that’s OK. You might, on reading a document like this, find yourself agreeing with it at least to some degree. But unless you agree with all of it, every last racist, elitist notion, do not ever hit forward on it.

This thing has been wandering around the internet since 2011. It has been modified several times to suit local situations and it has been added to and tweaked from time to time. Its survival is a result of the urge to hit enter because it touches a nerve with someone. This document is not an appeal to your intellect as a rational discussion of policy options. No, it’s an attempt to get people to over-react on an emotional level.

I would urge you not to fall for this kind of emotional appeal. If this came to you in hard copy, you would never bother to copy it and send it on. You wouldn’t waste the paper and the dollar for a stamp.  Before the internet, this thing would have appeared in the Waco Herald Chronicle letters to the editor, and it might have attracted a comment or two and then it would have died a natural death. But now it’s just so damned easy to click, and there it goes. 

Social media is becoming a mindless cesspool of attention-getting provocative crap like this. It’s the power behind Donald Trump and Viktor Orban and other populist autocrats. Sensible policy alternative decisions are being replaced by click-bait like the document I received. Resist the urge. Send this kind of stuff on only after you’re sure that it really works for you and reflects who you are and what you want our country to be