Redefining ‘Have’ and ‘Have-not’ : Those receiving public entitlements should be required to reimburse society in that most precious coinage: time.

Pity the poor welfare mother. One parent of a 6-year-old wrote, “The reason single mothers get on welfare is that it’s almost impossible to work when you’re a single parent. Kids have doctor appointments, parent-teacher conferences, homework; teachers take in-service days, holidays when your business isn’t closed.” This stressed soul goes on to let us know that with taxpayers’ funding, she has become the involved mother she was meant to be, and her child now reads at the head of the class.

Excuse me? Does this mean that the children of dual working parents don’t have identical needs? Or that it’s easier for the married working mother to skip her office obligations when her kids have doctors’ appointments? Or that the single working mother who struggles to provide honorably for her child is a maternal failure?

We have evolved an interesting culture indeed. Responsible parents generally need two incomes to pay for their children while at the same time meeting their tax obligations to the “entitled.” The average work day has lengthened over the last generation. Employers are demanding more work from fewer workers, and workers with families are often willing to go a good deal further to hold on to their employment in a dwindling job market. Meanwhile, the number of people on the dole, be it Social Security, disability or Aid to Families with Dependent Children, grows by leaps and bounds.

In H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine,” mankind has evolved into two subgroups: the subterranean Morlocks, who industriously worked for and fed the wimpy, vapid but beautiful Eloi until the Eloi reproduced and were ready to be eaten. I’m not recounting this fictional tale to espouse cannibalism, but rather to point out that we too are evolving toward a culture of workers and non-workers.

When politicians and ethical leaders beat up on the “haves” while bemoaning the fate of the “have-nots,” we correctly assume that they are speaking of material goods. But I would like to offer a different interpretation of these terms. The workers are the have-nots; the non-workers are the haves because they have the most precious commodity of all: time. And this commodity is being given to them by working people whose salaries support her in her leisurely motherhood.

Just who are the haves when we speak in the coinage of time? They are the welfare recipients, those on disability who aren’t really disabled, the retired whose leisure hours hang heavy. And the have-nots? The young mother whose nights are spent cleaning office buildings while her husband cares for their son, only to trade positions when the sun comes up. The grocery clerk who sends her daughter to the babysitter and puts in 12 hours a day. The pharmaceutical representative who puts in a full workday while his child lies ill in the hospital because he must keep his health insurance at all costs.

So I would like to call for a redistribution of the most precious commodity of all: time. Maybe that welfare mother can give a little after-school homework help to somebody else’s child too. And let’s send the healthy senior citizen down to the park to fix the swings or to the school to help at lunch hour. Even the alcoholic in rehabilitation can do some civic work a couple of hours a day instead of working out in the rehab unit’s gym.

But whom am I kidding? The Eloi learned to help themselves with a gentle prod from “The Time Machine’s” protagonist. But I doubt the guardians of entitlement or the welfare mother who fails to appreciate that she does her parenting on the backs of other mothers and fathers are anywhere near ready to share that greatest wealth of all.