John Hinderaker over at Powerline has a story from The Sun that helps explain why the West is bankrupt:
Ms. Belova could find work if she wanted to, but it isn’t worth her while. She is too well-educated, she thinks, to accept a low-paying job:
She is careful to work fewer than 16 hours a week so that the benefits keep rolling in. But her wages boost her income to more than £400 a week. On top of that she gets free childcare, fruit and milk vouchers — and even a clothes allowance for “job interviews”. Natalija said: “It is a strange system in this country. Basically, the fewer hours I work, the more I can earn on benefits. But that’s the way it is and it is not my fault.” She fell pregnant by an “on-off boyfriend” after her redundancy. Natalija said casually: “We decided not to stay together.” She insisted she would be prepared to get a full-time job — but only if the salary tops £25,000. Natalija said: “I am a highly educated woman and I speak six languages. I would never apply for a supermarket checkout job or a cleaner. “I am over-qualified. These jobs are beneath me. They are for people who don’t have the education I do.”
Go here to read the nauseating rest. Ms. Belova is a Lithuanian immigrant to Britain. Once she arrived there she got pregnant, leaped aboard the Welfare Train, and enjoys what appears to be a great lifestyle courtesy of the British taxpayer. Her story is a perfect symbol as to why the welfare states of the West are bankrupt. The cause of our fiscal bankruptcy is our moral bankruptcy. People have a duty to support themselves unless they are physically or mentally unable to do so. Ms. Belova has no problem at all gleefully living off the sweat of others, which in other times would have marked her as a beneficiary of some form of slavery. Fiscal problems can be solved and if they aren’t they tend to resolve themselves in a financial crash. Problems of moral bankruptcy are much more difficult to fix.
Sad.
When the working class is taxed to death what then?
Where will the over educated dependents go for their hand outs?
George Orwell was quit a visionary, unfortunately.
She is gaming a system she didn’t create. I blame her a little but the biggest blame lies with the voters themselves, and their total misunderstanding of human nature.
And if she were not educated, she would point at that as a reason she couldn’t get a good paying job and support herself. Basically, any reason not to work will be accepted. As an insurance adjuster, I’ve seen judges award disability benefits to people contrary to the facts and the law, and in some cases manufacture facts in their legal orders to justify their ruling. I’ve even seen a guy who was videotaped on multiple consecutive days building a barn on his property be awarded permanent total disability benefits because he told the judge he was having a few good days, the pain was horrible afterwards, and his good days were so few and far between that he would be unable to maintain employment. He was then caught diverting the narcotic pain medications we were paying for. While we do win quite a few of those cases, invariably these people then apply for social security disability payments. Of course, these are a very small minority of claimants, but collectively they represent a very large drain on society. Most people want nothing more than to go back to work, but the ones who do not consume enormous medical and legal resources to obtain the golden ticket of disability payments. They don’t have to pay for their attorneys or their physicians under our current system, so why not?
You are right. This mentality is why we are bankrupt. Not content to siphon off the productivity of the current generation for political gain of politicians the financial gain of their supporters, we are siphoning off the productivity of my children and potential grandchildren for that purpose. In the name of protecting the weak, we have allowed in the malingerers.
The Church has made the unwise decision of partnering with the state in the charity business not realizing that the state isn’t about charity. It’s about power. And so what should be considered charity has been harnessed in the name of power. And now they wish to make it unrecognizable as charity. In the past, a relative would take care of a family member. We have destroyed the family as an institution across a large swath of society. Then the state steps in and makes people who would otherwise receive family assistance if they had an intact family, and makes them dependent on the state.
She “fell pregnant?” Holy expletive!
The young lady reminds me of a quote from a Russian pilot who defected -along with his Mig 25 – to the west some years ago. While having a shot in a bar while on a cross country trip (IIRC), he was told about the American welfare system. He responded, “All that time they kept telling us we were building Communism, and here the Americans have gone and done it!”
Quote may not be exact, but it’s pretty darn close.
I read the article that the link connects to. I can’t believe this woman is educated at all. She seems to be setting herself up for criticism. It almost seems like a parody. Doesn’t she realize how all this will sound to people who actually make their way through life by working everyday, doing whatever they need to even if they think it is beneath them?
She is the wife of a Russian Billionaire Oligarch Leonid Rozhetskin. The point of the piece is to make you hate a section of society. The question is how much tax did she get to avoid for the article?
if you were real Catholics you’d find the idea of hating the sick, disabled and unintentionally unemployed abhorant.
Certainly you’re going to find out that Our Lord wont be impressed.
That phrase “fell pregnant” threw me too. I just looked around on Google, and apparently it’s common in England and Australia.
“She is the wife of a Russian Billionaire Oligarch Leonid Rozhetskin.”
Missing and presumed dead since 2008. If she has access to any of his assets, the fact that she is sponging off the British taxpayer is truly reprehensible.
“if you were real Catholics you’d find the idea of hating the sick, disabled and unintentionally unemployed abhorant.”
What any of that screed has to do with the article or my post is beyond me.
“Certainly you’re going to find out that Our Lord wont be impressed.”
Glad that you have a personal pipeline to the Almighty Doc regarding God’s opinion on blog posts.
She is the wife of a Russian Billionaire Oligarch Leonid Rozhetskin. The point of the piece is to make you hate a section of society. The question is how much tax did she get to avoid for the article? if you were real Catholics you’d find the idea of hating the sick, disabled and unintentionally unemployed abhorant.
Certainly you’re going to find out that Our Lord wont be impressed.
Impugning other people’s motives is abhorrent.
Stephen, I have no problem being a troll when I think it’s called for, but I don’t see anything in this article or thread that constitutes hatred for the needy. Maybe conservatives should be required to state it clearly every now and then: that unnecessarily living off the work of others is an injustice to both parties. But I don’t see how you could read any malice into this article.
What any of that screed has to do with the article or my post is beyond me.
We live in a world where unchaining your id is a mark of passionate authenticity.
It’s actually nothing of the sort, and is annoying as Hell, but there you go.
Doesn’t Catholic social teaching mention something about a preferential option for hot redheads?
“Doesn’t Catholic social teaching mention something about a preferential option for hot redheads?”
Hot redheads run in my family Pauli, so I would give a thumbs up for that preferential option!
Lathwell, I didn’t see anyone here talking about the sick or disabled except you. To the contrary, we were discussing people who are specifically NOT sick and disabled who are able to sponge off of society. In my work I pay out benefits to people who are sick and disabled, and I do so conscientiously. It is a known fact, however, that when you are offering money to the sick, disabled, and unemployed that the well, the able bodied, and the lazy will also line up to receive that money as well. The problem for society comes when the powers that be have chosen to cast a blind eye on that practice, and even encourage it. Do you propose that we continue to pay healthy people not to work?
I don’t think that’s the same person who was married to the billionaire. Compare pictures.
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-542412/KGB-plot-fears-London-oligarch-vanishes-traces-blood-mansion.html
The world is bankrupt spiritually and morally as well
I was thinking of a career change. Thanks, Donald, for pointing me toward this amazing opportunity. Do you think I could divorce Mr. Zummo? Then we could live in sin and he could just be my baby-daddy? I’d get more benefits that way.
Paul would have to get a “wife beater” T-shirt Mrs Z, learn to split his infinitives and get some facial tattooing and all that would be too high a price to pay!
I get the point of the story — the entitlement mentality and dependence upon government are sucking the life out of the Western industrial nations — but this particular case sounds kinda fishy to me and that photograph practically screams “staged.”
For one thing, why would someone who was genuinely trying to game the system and get away with it, plaster their name and face all over one of Britain’s best known tabloids unless they were 1) dumb as a box of rocks or 2) merely posing as a welfare cheat at the behest of the newspaper, in order to “illustrate” the story the newspaper wanted to tell? Kind of like the guests on “Jerry Springer” who turned out to be merely actors or actresses pretending to be lesbian ex-Nazis sleeping with their brother’s girlfriends?
Yes, I realize some people really ARE that dumb (like criminals who boast about their crimes on Facebook and Twitter), but since The Sun is a Rupert Murdoch tabloid with a history of sensationalism, I personally think this story needs some more fact checking before we all jump on the “isn’t it terrible!” bandwagon.
I don’t know Elaine. Perhaps it is false. But I have plenty who come into my office who receive a boatload of benefits because they are poor. While making conversation with a number of them after Christmas, they talked about all the gifts they bought. In many cases the total could easily have added up to thousands of dollars per family.
She is an aspiring actress Elaine and my guess is that she hoped this story would give her a huge amount of free publicity which it certainly has. The story has caused a huge furor on the Left in Britain where living on the Dole is considered sacrosanct in “progressive” quarters. Attempts to discredit it have been legion including attempts to link Belova with the Belova who was married to the Russian billionaire who went missing in 2008. (From photographs they appear to be completely different people.) Critics have not been able to argue that the story is incorrect as to welfare benefits in formerly Great Britain. The most they have argued is that government rent subsidies are not income which of course sounds ridiculous to anyone who pays rent or a mortgage.
[…] Why the West is Bankrupt – Donald R. McClarey, The American Catholic […]
The Wikipedia article on Leonid Rozhetskin mentions that some years before he (allegedly) disappeared into the United States Federal Witness Protection program, the billionaire had married a model by the name of Natalya Belova.
The New York agency Next features the portfolio of a Natalya Belova which may be seen at http://www.nextmodels.com/m/model-ny_045606a0-6a50-435b-9fd7-42ba778f63ba_2f26d881-2be1-4953-b139-15bcad95180d_Natalya+Belova
Are they two different “Natalya Belova”s? In my opinion, emphatically, yes: it seems to me that the model featured on the Next website would have no trouble lining up a dozen top-industry bookings starting tomorrow. And the gal featured in this article’s illustration (above)? Not so much. She is cheerleader-cute, but not top-flight model material. If she ever decided she wanted to earn her own living, she would do well to stick with translating.
“Fall pregnant?” Did she trip over her boyfriend?