Raven2099

Everyone hears about the government and how they are involved in so many things these days. No one knows just exactly how much the government should be involved, or shouldn’t be. It seems that they come up everywhere. Is that really the way it is supposed to be? No one questions. They just go along with what happens.

I used to work at a grocery store, and during that time, I became very familiar with Food Stamps. At first, I didn’t understand what they were. Then, someone explained them as the government paying for people’s food. I laughed thinking that was a joke. Surely there must be a catch. It didn’t take me long to find out that it was no joke. It was serious! I saw people come in the store and use this Food Stamp card (also called EBT card) to pay for their groceries. I would see all kinds of different people using them. Some of the people looked like they needed money for food badly, while others did not. Either way, I would often be in shock at seeing the way people used these cards. Some people would stretch each dollar and buy essential items. Others seemed to just waste it on junk foods. Then, they would fork out a wad of cash to pay for their beer and cigarettes. I often wanted to ask these people why they couldn’t use the cash on their food. I never asked because I knew that for a lot of those people, the answer would be because if they used that money on their food, then they couldn’t afford their beer and cigarettes.

After analyzing this system for quite some time and noticing a lot of Food Stamp abuse, it prompted me to research it more and to create a webpage about it, which I did. I started a debate about Food Stamps. Are they necessary? Should the government be doing them? How can they regulate Food Stamps better to make sure there is no Food Stamp abuse?

I continued thinking about the government’s place in food. Recently, we’ve all heard about President Obama’s healthcare plan. This is also something interesting to think about. What is the government’s place in healthcare? What is the government’s place in supplying people’s needs? What exactly are the government’s obligations? I decided to research it and write this article.

The first place I went to was our first part of government- the Declaration of Independence. I started reading it to see what our fore-fathers had in mind as the first government. The second paragraph begins by saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” So, this is what the government feels everyone deserves, and everyone equally deserves- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The purpose of the government is to ensure that every single American citizen has those three rights.

After that, it continues to say “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. Again, this tells us that the government’s job is solely to protect us and give us these rights. This is the whole reason the government was founded! It was not founded to solve everyone’s problems. It was not founded to make everyone happy, either. Notice that one of the three endowed rights is the pursuit of happiness. It does not say that it’s job is to make everyone happy. Only to give everyone the opportunity to pursue happiness. The government was not even founded to supply everyone’s needs. It was founded to ensure everyone with life (protection), liberty (freedome to live how they please), and the pursuit of happiness (equal opportunities to move on in life, ie- starting a business, getting married, etc).

This being the purpose of the government, what are it’s obligations? The definition of obligation is “a requirement to take some course of action”. The government is required to do what it says it will do, which is to provide everyone with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In order to do this, the government must protect people. The government has done this. They have created laws that every citizen equally must abide by. There are punishments for those who do not follows these laws. Next on the list, the government is obliged to provide everyone with liberty. We have courts where everyone is innocent until proven guilty. The government has allowed us other rights and freedoms that many other countries around the world do not have, such as freedom of religion, freedom of speech, etc. Finally, the government is obliged to equally provide everyone with the pursuit of happiness, not happiness, but the pursuit of happiness. How to do this? This is debatable. However, with everyone having a different view of what happiness is, it is hard to pinpoint. In my opinion, the obligation is for the government not to prevent people from following their faith, family, and dreams, or to prevent them from reaching success. Of course, citizens must still abide within the other laws that have been created to protect others’ pursuit of happiness, as well.

In conclusion, the government’s job is not to make you happy. It is not to supply your needs. It is not to get everyone into their dream college. It is not to allow anyone who wants some extra money for food to have some. It is not to make a single economic class of people by charging high taxes on the rich, and giving out the handouts to the poor. Its duty is simply to protect its citizens, to ensure freedom for all, and to give everyone the right to pursue their faith and dreams without resistance from the government.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4741344

I think:
The Obligations of Any Government is to it’s people, to it’s voters… food, Education, Healthcare should all be free and paid for by the gov

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