Maybe the Grinch was right?

The Grinch was a bitter, stern, grouch who hated all things XMAS. He lived on a high hill above a city where the people loved all things XMAS. Their incessant singing of XMAS carols kept him awake and when they celebrated XMAS with feasting and presents it drove him mad. He had to do something to stop their jubilation.

First he decided to block their giving of presents. It had been a hard few years and many of them were out of work. A large percentage of them were barely surviving on their dwindling savings. So he took away the few dollars they had been getting to tide them over until they were able to get decent jobs. He did this by claiming they were living plush life styles paid for by the government. All the leaders had to do was stop giving them money simply because the “claimed” they couldn’t find work, and they would rush out and grab the jobs that were certainly waiting for them. Their rallying cry was “There’s no such thing as unemployment, just people unwilling to work.”

Then he moved on to the feasting. He reasoned that if they were hungry they would stop being so annoying and quickly forget their celebrations. Since many were barely able to feed their families, and he could see the “food for the poor” programs were over strained he had a great idea. “Oh SNAP,” he said. “I’ve got it. If I can stop the government programs providing them with money to eat they will turn to the private charities, which will quickly be overwhelmed and collapse.”  So he convinced the leaders that they were wasting the people’s money helping the poor to eat. After all they were cheating by using food money to buy chewing gum for their children. Further lottery tickets sales in the poorest of neighborhoods weren’t down so must have plenty of money hidden away.

And so they stopped giving the needy money for food. Sure they saw that mothers with small children were going to starve and families where the bread winner was an enlisted man in the army would be stricken but after all they weren’t the voting base that the leaders catered to. Taxes would be stabilized and there might even be enough left over to pay for some bright new missiles that would protect them from those mean old terrorists. So gone was the money to help the poor eat.

With all of that accomplished the Grinch felt that surely he would be able to rest in peace. He hardly heard the constant wailing of emigrants to the great city calling for fair laws that would let them join in the great land. He could sleep the sleep of innocents where XMAS would be a thing of the past.

That year the town was dark. During the next year it became far darker. The impacts of their actions began to come home to the leaders.

With the unemployed cut off from the little money they were receiving until they could find work, they became desperate.  Crime was up in the city and the leaders were besieged to provide protection, but they had already reduced the taxes and so there was no money to pay for additional police. They thought to turn to the military for help. There the leaders found an effect of their actions that they hadn’t  foreseen. The military ranks were quickly thinning as the lower ranks, stripped of the assistance they had been getting to feed their families, were leaving in droves. They rushed to the unemployment offices looking for those same jobs that the leaders were sure had been out their when they cut off the assistance for the previously unemployed.  Now the most popular place in town was the unemployment office.

With the poor stripped of assistance for food now using whatever they had to feed their children, rent was going unpaid and mortgages were going into default. The banks, which had barely survived the last housing crises, were failing in droves and the government programs to provide protection against bank failures were once again pushed to their limits. The people were shouting that their leaders had to do something to save them or they would pull their support for the leaders.

The leaders gathered in their darken offices to decide what to do. The people were starving. There was no money for food so the stores that sold the food were failing and threatening to pull their support of the leaders. With the stores failing the farmers who provided the food were failing and they threatened to pull their support of the leaders.

The military might of the land was dwindling as the enlisted ranks were thinning and the generals had forgotten how to fire those bright new missiles that the leaders had bought. Worse still those who were leaving the service were demanding jobs and flooding the veteran’s offices asking for aid. The contractors who had provided services for the army were now claiming that the money was drying up as the new slimmed down military no longer needed what they provided. They were threatening to pull their support for the leaders.

Faced with an almost unanimous lack of support the leaders did the only thing they had left. They elected the Grinch president and blamed the whole mess on him.