Thomas Lucente: ‘Earn’ that welfare with drug test

If you want the government to steal my money and give it to you, then stop whining about taking a drug test.

Seriously.

If you are a beneficiary of America’s growing welfare state, a recipient of the money government has stolen from others to redistribute as it sees fit, then you need to be to tested for drugs.

This has nothing to do with drugs being illegal, either. Drugs should be legal. A free human being should have the right to ingest into his or her body any substance he or she wishes.

No, this is about the looters and moochers taking from the producers and living high, so to speak, on the hog. If there were a test for steak and lobster, I would likewise advocate for that.

This is not a violation of anyone’s rights. The drug testing would not be mandatory. One is never required to take the stolen loot from the state. However, if one wants to enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labor, then one should not be wasting that so-called largesse on drugs, liquor, and other luxuries. Basic subsistence and shelter. And basic means basic.

Of course, the leftists, who really only care about power and control and not really helping our so-called poor, will cry foul. People need help, they will say with a smirk that proclaims to the world they are smart and non-leftists are all idiots or God-fearing, homegrown right-wing terrorists.

It is a lie, of course. The United States has the richest poor people in the world. Many Americans who the federal government claims live in poverty actually live better than your middle class European.

According to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, government surveys show more than 80 percent of the so-called poor have air conditioning, 75 percent have a car, nearly 70 percent have cable or satellite TV, 50 percent have a computer, and 40 percent have a widescreen HDTV. Your typical “poor” person lives in a normal dwelling that is larger than that of the average non-poor European. Nearly 40 percent of the poor own their own homes. Poor children have the same protein and nutrient intakes as upper middle-class children.

Heck, that is more than I have. I have neither cable or satellite TV nor a widescreen HDTV and I work two jobs just to have a house and put food on the table.

Like their fellow leftists in the unions, the poor tell me to stop complaining about what they have and to simply get my own.

That is not as silly as it sounds. Today, under President Barack Obama, millions of Americans are now better off choosing to mooch rather than produce. It is often more profitable to be on welfare than to work.

A 2013 study by Micheal D. Tanner and Charles Hughes for the Cato Institute shows that welfare pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and in 13 states it pays more than $15 per hour. In 10 states and the District of Columbia, welfare pays more than the entry-level salary for a teacher. In eight states, welfare recipients receive benefits worth more than the median salary there.

Yet, miraculously, the poverty level remains unchanged since President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty began some 50 years ago despite our government’s redistribution of nearly $1 trillion a year. That is right. The government takes nearly $1 trillion a year from those of us who work and gives it to those who don’t. And that doesn’t even include Social Security, Medicare or unemployment insurance.

At least 12 states have some sort of drug testing regime in place and 14 more states are considering legislation.

Most people who work in this country are subject to drug testing. So, it is not really not all that much to ask a moocher to urinate in a cup before taking a piece of the $1 trillion the government is stealing from the producers every year and giving away to those who choose not to work. It’s the least amount of work, literally, they can do.