So you're in college or have recently graduated from college. You have this Utopian view of what the world should be, that there should be no poor people, corporations are evil, profit is a four-letter word, rich people pay too little in taxes and conservatives are evil people who simply don't care about others. You've bought into messaging of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party, like so many of your classmates.
I can see why you see the world this way. I had similar beliefs when I was 19, 20 and 21 years old, but then a funny thing happened to change my view of the world. I grew up, and so will you.
Once you start working and paying taxes, your beliefs will begin to change. And then once you marry and start raising a family your views will change even more dramatically. Let me explain why.
Once you graduate and start working, you will see the percentage of what you take home diminish as your income increases. As you work your way up the corporate ladder or build your own business, you will be asked to contribute more and more of what you earn to the federal government. Each year, as your income increases, you will pay more taxes to the point that you wonder whether government receives more of your paycheck than you do, once you add all of your federal, state and local taxes and fees together.
A few of your college classmates and friends will somehow never be able to find a good job, so they will rely on government checks to survive. A few will receive food stamps. A few will sign up and receive disability. Even more will receive welfare. You will realize that the difference between your success and their failure isn't that government didn't provide them with an equal opportunity. You will learn that the reason that they aren't successful is that they didn't work as hard or as long as you have.
After years of watching your hard-earned tax dollars support government programs that help the poor, you will see that the percentage of people living in poverty hasn't diminished. In fact, you see that as government programs expand, more people take advantage of them instead of working as you have.
You will also learn, whether you work for a company or build your own company, that people are employed because companies earn a profit. Without profit there will be no jobs. You may lose your job at an unprofitable company, or, if you own your own company, you may have to lay off a few of your workers because a new government regulation or an increase in your tax rate took away part of your profit.
You will learn that your savings and investments also rely on companies being profitable and growing. If companies are profitable and prosper, your investments will grow accordingly, but if they aren't successful, you see your nestegg grow smaller or disappear completely. You begin to realize that your retirement and the retirements of others rely on the ability of American businesses to grow and prosper. You will also see first-hand that government often puts unreasonable roadblocks in the way of companies being successful. You will learn, as I have over the years, that government is often the enemy of business.
And then when you marry and have children of your own, your views change even more. You become very protective of your offspring to the point that you don't want your children doing the same things that you may have done as a young person. You also realize that every dollar you send to government is a dollar that you can't save for their college, put food on the table or buy their clothes. You resent working so hard for so little of what you earn, while so many aren't working and receive the benefit of your tax dollars.
As you enter your 30s, you may begin admiring successful older people who give back to their communties in time and money. You will notice that the majority of these people are conservative. These people worked hard, built a successful business that employed people, providing them with a good wage, and now they want to give back even more to their community. They care deeply about others, and they share with you what they've learned -- that the only way to change people is to change their behavior and that handouts rarely if ever have a long-term impact. You listen and learn as these role models support programs in their community that help to move people out of poverty through efforts that help them to learn job skills and money management.
You may become involved in programs like Habitat for Humanity, which is exponentially more successful than government housing because people who receive houses through this non-profit have pride in their homes because they pay for them and help to build them. You begin to see that government, through what you once viewed as "kindness," often holds people back by giving them that handout, instead of providing them what they really need, which is a hand up out of poverty.
You now see the world in a much different way. You look back to your early 20s and your college years and begin to see how wrong you really were.
You realize that you're now a conservative.
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