BUSINESS IS BOOMING FOR SOCIAL WORKERS

 

By Bill Dunn

 

Years ago, it was rumored that the owner of a fledgling glass repair company went out at night and shot holes in the windows of houses and cars with a BB gun. The next day, not surprisingly, his phone rang off the hook with new customers needing his services.

 

Whether this really happened or not, the story raises an interesting question: Is it possible to take steps to guarantee that one’s business always will have plenty of customers?

 

In these dire economic times, many companies are probably pondering that very question. Where I work, the slow-down in commercial construction is very noticeable, and there’s not much we can do about it, even if we tried using a BB gun.

 

There is, however, a sector of the economy that has mastered the art of guaranteeing an endless stream of customers. These folks were featured on the front page of The Hartford Courant last month in a news story titled, “Connecticut Child Agency’s Hiring Plan Faces A Fight.”

 

The story focused mainly on the outrage voiced by various politicians in response to a plan by the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) to create three new supervisory positions with annual salaries of more than $125,000 each. The story also noted that DCF currently has 138 supervisors making over $100,000 per year, plus more than 1,200 other employees making over $75,000 per year. (By the way, when discussing the annual salaries of state workers, always adjust the figures upward by at least another 50-percent to account for the perks that private sector workers can only dream about: the gold-plated health insurance plan, numerous vacation and sick days, generous pensions, and personal use of those ubiquitous state vehicles.)

 

How can these people claim it’s necessary to hire more well-paid bureaucrats while the state faces its worst budget crisis in history? Simple: They have done a masterful job of ensuring an ever-growing supply of needy customers.

 

For more than four decades now, the Welfare Industrial Complex—psychologists, social workers, race hustlers, and liberal activists—have worked overtime to redefine the family. The traditional model, with a father, a mother, and their children, was labeled old-fashioned and intolerant. The new definition of “family” was declared to be whatever you want it to be.

 

With the advent of no-fault divorce and a removal of the stigma of unwed motherhood, the number of children brought up in single-mother homes skyrocketed. And woe to anyone who dared to criticize this new paradigm.

 

But according to one study cited in the Village Voice (not exactly a right-wing publication), children raised in single-mother homes “are five times more likely to commit suicide, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape (for the boys), 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home.”

This shift in our culture’s definition of the family should be called the “Full Employment for DCF Workers Act.” Sure, our society is crumbling at its very foundations. Sure, crime and drug abuse and social pathologies are raging out of control. But at least a huge number of state employees are set for life. And they didn’t even have to use a BB gun.