Mitt Romney has come under heavy fire the past few weeks for his comments regarding the 47% of people in the country that are at least partly dependent on the government to supplement their income. I believe Mitt misstates the problem facing the country. While the poorer class of people in the country have become merely a pawn in the Liberal agenda, there is nothing new about this. Every nation will always have a class of people that take no interest in their well-being or carry much respect for themselves as human beings. The Left has portrayed itself as the savior of these lost souls and many of them believe the hype. While their behavior and drain on our nation infuriates many of the Modern American Conservatives, we must look beyond first layer of the corruption of the American spirit that lives in Section 8 housing slums and welfare offices and recognize that the true threat to our nation is how the Left is driving the middle class into suicide.
Since the end of WWII our nation has driven the level of prosperity of the entire world to a level that could not have been imagined prior to the war. The people of the United States have benefited from the raise in the standard of living. Even when we speak of the poor in this nation, they tower over the poor of most other countries in the world. Our poor rival most nation’s middle class in standards of living. But the grass is always greener.
As the standard of living has risen, so have the aspirations of the middle class. There was a time when only the upper class attended the finest schools, ate the best food and had access to the most advanced health care. Now every middle class person believes that those benefits are accessible to them as well. Living in the country that we do, the middle class has every right to try and enjoy the pleasures of the upper class. No pedigree or title are needed to attend Harvard or eat at the place of their choosing. The catch is that it costs money to partake in these delights of the upper class. In the United States that existed in previous generations, the people understood that to enjoy the privilege of an upper class life style, they must reach the upper class. This meant they gained an education by any means necessary, it meant longer hours of work and study. It meant sacrifice every day to achieve their goal. Nearly all of the idols of American history came from humble beginnings. Lincoln’s childhood is American legend. Alexander Hamilton was born illegitimate in what is now the British West Indies and was orphaned at age 13. Andrew Jackson’s father died a few weeks before his birth and he spent time in a British POW camp where his brother died. Ben Franklin was his father’s 15th child and ended formal schooling at age 10. Ford, Gates, Morgan, Grant, Lincoln, Carnegie, Whitney, Edison, Jobs, Twain and names like those were not titles of nobility when they were born. They made their lives and names mean something in their pursuit of wealth, knowledge and success. These men prospered and led a nation from the frontier of the known world to the edge of the galaxy in the span of a couple of hundred years. That is how the nation used to work.
With our incredible advancement over the past few generations, many in the middle class have come to realize that since so many others were pushing the limits of success that the fruits of their success would trickle down to them without much effort on their part. This has brought us a large segment of the middle class that doesn’t produce the success of the upper class, but still insists on their fair share of the fruits.
This is how we have ended up with school teachers that want us to believe that their student’s poor performance is due to the teacher’s low pay and poor working conditions. Auto workers insist on life long benefits for tightening bolts, regardless of their employer’s financial situation. The desire to increase one’s productivity has fallen as one’s desire to live easier has risen.
In the drive to force the middle class to reach for what is beyond their means, we have made it even harder to achieve that which should be within in their reach. In a country where everyone should have the highest standard of education, only those with high educations will be considered employable. The truth of the matter is that not all humans are born capable of earning a Masters or Doctorate Degree in their respective fields. If we all could, then it wouldn’t be very impressive to begin with. Some people are meant to learn by experience, but without the proper credentials they will never get the chance to prove themselves. By insisting that everyone should have a college degree, we have driven the price up and made it harder to get, coupled with less of a reward at the end, since even once you graduate you are not guaranteed a job worth the time and money you spent getting the education to do it.
The same applies to health care. If every person is to receive top quality care, regardless if they can pay the cost the provider is asking, we are slowly destroying the industry. Doctors must spend years upon years educating themselves to the highest levels of their craft, in order to be qualified to mend broken bones and prescribe basic medicines. The demands of the highest education, unlimited treatment for all, failure to be compensated, endless regulations and legal entanglements have forced basic health care beyond the reach of the average person… all in the name of creating a fairer, better system.
Of course it is nice to believe that every American should have access to high quality health care, food and education, benefits that ensure that each citizen can live out their final days without the worry of providing that cushion. The United States is the richest country in the history of the planet, all of our citizens should live like kings. However, in the long run, that is impossible. The only way to ensure that one receives high quality products is to pay high quality people to provide them. What kind of products will you receive if you are unwilling to pay their price and still believe they are owed to you? Our middle class has grown disillusioned. They are unable to afford the things that they have been told belong to them by birth. Since they are unable to access the things they believe are their birthright, someone must be denying them their chance.
We now have generations of people living in this country who believe that the system is rigged against them. They were entitled to the job they had, they were owed the house they took a mortgage out on, they deserved the car they got the loan for… but now the system has turned sour. They have been faced with the reality that they weren’t worth the money they were being paid. They had bought too big of a house at unfavorable terms, their car is impractical and now costs more than it is worth. When reality came back swinging in 2008 what did those who had lived blissfully on the edge of their own demise do when they were faced with reality? They blamed the system, their bosses, their banks, China, their parents and teachers. No one had told them that the world changes, no one had prepared them to fight through the tough times and to prepare for those tough times during the good times. Their skills so arduously acquired are now obsolete, times have changed, but they haven’t. Surely it is someone else’s fault that they didn’t stay on top of technology.
The middle class of America bought into the idea that they deserved an upper class existence at a lower class effort. Now that our country faces the enormous cost of these entitlements we are faced with the decision on how to handle them. Should the middle class buckle down and begin to earn what they want? Should the country return to producing quality products at lower prices and be the driving force behind the innovation of the world? Instead, most people tend towards the belief that they are still entitled to the special treatment and if they aren’t getting it, then someone should be forced to give it to them. Instead of being realistic about health care and education costs, they insist they be paid by the current producing class and future generations. Instead of taking responsibility for the well being of their lives and futures they push that responsibility off on to society as a whole.
The bill for our lack of responsibility is coming due. We can either face up and pay it or continue to pass the blame and whine that we are being treated unfairly by life.
Categories: Blog Posts
Stovepipe Sentinel 
Well stated. Entitlement mentality is a problem because, like you said, some people assume that their needs should be provided without the responsibility for that provision falling on themselves and their choices.