"Where Olmsted County News Comes First"

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Do you think the use of all fireworks should be legal in the state of Minnesota for all consumers?

 Yes, everyone should be able to use them

 No, only those with permits to do so


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Comments(2)

A good percentage of Americans are agitated about “entitlements.” I admit I am, too.

I’m not particularly concerned that a single-parent who works for minimum wage might spend some of their food benefits on chips and soda. I have made peace with the concept of providing low-cost student loans and scholarships. I sleep fine even knowing that seniors receive minimum benefit in the $600 range.

The entitlement mentality I fear is what’s taken hold in the rest of us; those of us who point fingers at the beneficiaries we perceive as unworthy.

We believe we are entitled to an ever-growing economy, that we shouldn’t have to suffer economic downturns. Politicians won’t admit what any first-year student of economics can tell you, that business cycles are normal. The economy is going to occasionally slow or even contract, and that is a good thing. It acts as a governor on inflation and unemployment.

Similarly we have come to expect the value of what we own, such as our homes, to only increase. As anyone who bought tulips in the 1630’s or Beanie Babies in the 1990’s could tell you: prices rise, prices fall. Not even real estate is immune, let alone our retirement accounts.

We demand good roads and other government services but expect that we won’t be taxed to pay for it. We want to eat fast food, smoke and skip the exercise but have affordable health care readily available to fix all that ails us. We insist on cheap electricity from coal but we don’t want coal trains, and we’d just as soon ignore the fact that our once-pristine Minnesota lakes now all contain mercury. We want to drive large cars and trucks, often alone, and ignore the impact on the climate.

Particularly noticeable this time of year is our desire to buy, buy, buy, usually without thinking about where all this stuff comes from. The discovery of American brands in the ashes of recent clothing factory fire in Bangledesh is no surprise. The workers had been locked in the factory. We have long known that our consumption habits rely on workers in deplorable conditions. Yet we feel entitled to fill our shopping carts, without regard to how it’s affecting others.

It wasn’t that way until recently. For the first 100,000 years of human existence we were not so self-centered. Stonehenge, Machu Picchu, etc., were begun by people who never expected to see the results in their lifetime. There have been more immediate results to most endeavors, but we’ve seen people pull together time and time again for the greater good.

There are still plenty of selfless acts undertaken everyday, but as a society we have lost that edge. Could my generation ever stand up to, say, the “Greatest Generation” that made such sacrifices during the Second World War? We can’t be bothered to sort our recyclables, let alone save kitchen fats and scrounge for scrap metal. We can’t even be bothered to mute our cell phones in public!

So what is behind this sense of entitlement? Success, in large part. Survival has become much easier. Whereas in 1950 the average family spent 30 percent of their income on food and over 40 percent on housing, today we spend less than half that. We haven’t had to make many sacrifices, unless you count delaying an upgrade to the latest PlayStation as a sacrifice.

But there’s more to it. There is an insecurity component that causes us to “circle the wagons” of entitlement. Our culture is increasingly diverse in background and beliefs, and the response is too often to think less of anything or anyone different.

I thought of this as I saw that the story of the annual “War on Christmas” was back. You can be forgiven if you thought that canard died with “Paul Harvey News.” It’s the claim that Christians’ celebration of birth of the Savior is being taken away by lawsuits and the recognition of other faiths. Most often decried is the use of “X-mas.” Nevermind that “X-mas” has been used for decades, and that the “X” is actually the Greek letter “Chi” - long used to denote Christ. It entitles us to feel threatened.

This is the perfect opportunity to set aside our sense of entitlement. That’s what really threatens our happiness - not allowing ourselves to be comfortable not just with people different than us but with uncertainty, with the occasional setback and, in general, less. Next time you are behind someone in line using food benefits to buy Doritos, just let it go.

We have a bigger entitlement problem.