What happens when entitlement meets reality?
Entitlement is an interesting word. The dictionary provides two distinct meanings. First, it is the state or condition of being entitled, the second is a government program providing benefits to members of a specified group.
Let’s briefly consider the second definition first, “government programs providing benefits to members of specified groups.” The very first government entitlement programs were created in response to civil unrest and protests of veteran groups after the civil war. They got a big boost with the social security “safety net” set up by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the depression era Congress. The theory behind Social Security was the government would collect far more in taxes than it paid out and the trust fund would be self-sustaining forever (that was the theory). It assumed there would always be more workers than annuitants. A look at the current projections for our society show that assumption is no longer valid and there will soon be far fewer young people paying into the program than people collecting benefits. These “must pay” entitlement programs now account for roughly 60 percent of the annual budget. Social Security and Medicare make up a little over 50 percent of that expense. We hear a lot about how the Social Security Trust fund has been raided, but my research shows that is not exactly true. The “trust fund” can only invest its funds in programs that are guaranteed by the U.S. government. The problem is we will soon run out of tax dollars to pay off the investments made in the government by the government itself. The question is what will happen when we reach that point? Who will be left holding the bag?
Now we come to the issue of who is entitled? As a nation we had historically bought into the idea of “American Exceptionalism.” Whether it was right or wrong to think we were exceptional seems to be one of the core elements of our on-going social debate. I believe the sense of being exceptional pushes us to achieve as a society, sometimes in remarkable ways. The young are now taught we are not exceptional, in fact, there are those who teach we are not exceptional and our arrogance has made us the villain. It seems to me along the lines of this change comes the idea that government is there to solve our problems for us. That has been the mantra for the progressive left since the fall of the stock market in 1929. With the best intentions we have created social programs and safety nets but it seems in so doing we have changed the spirit of our upcoming generations from expecting greatness awaits them if they have the courage to apply themselves to accepting that tomorrow won’t be brighter than today. We seem to have instilled a sense that they are “owed” a life free from all the things that stress us, and the government is solely responsible for their well-being and happiness. It is an unfortunate testament to that faith that the government so grossly failed in its job during the recent school massacre.
The question before us though is who is responsible for this dramatic shift in our individual, national and world view? I believe the answer is unfortunately quite simple, the blame lies with the baby boomer generation. My generation. We are the children of a generation who knew abject poverty, where work was hard and often dangerous, and who fought a war where the entire industrial might of the nation was focused on war goods production, and civilian goods were sacrificed. But they came from parents who for the vast majority shared a faith in family and independence. They came out of that experience vowing to make life better for their children, and they did.
What we saw in our parents though was the stresses of this new America beginning to take its toll. Divorce, once rare and unthinkable, began to increase, and the laws were changed to make it easier for that was what they wanted. Alcohol and drug addiction began to rise, along with the domestic violence that often comes with people out of control in the emotional state. Mass migration and loss of the extended families was another theme during the years of our youth. In search of the better job, the better climate, or the better community people moved at rates unseen for a number of generations. All these issues reflected the beginnings of what has become a disposable society.
Most of us grew up without too much concern about our daily survival, although racism and poverty still deeply affected a sizeable and significant number of families, especially in Appalachia and the South. For many of my generation, we would be the first in our families to go to colleges and universities to realize the dream of a greater life. The big decisions in our youth were what color bike we wanted or should our baseball glove have five or six fingers.
We came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, a time not unlike today, where protest and pressure for social change was overwhelming. Young men fled to Canada to avoid being drafted into the services engaged fighting a war in a country many Americans could not pick out on a map. Those who could afford to found ways to avoid the draft either through remaining in college or through political influence with their local draft boards. Eventually civil protest, and extreme violence by radicals led President Johnson to retire. His replacement, President Nixon promised to end the war, but it took him well into his second term to keep that promise.
Meanwhile the blacks of the nation were engaged in another type of war where they fought for an equality that had long been denied them. The government responded with new laws and new social programs to help lift them up from the oppression they had so long experienced. What the government could not do was change the hearts and minds of those who had grown up with a view whites and blacks were not equal. But, the social engineers of the time said we could put preferential treatment programs in place as a way to overcome those biases and the bigotry that existed. I believe this was the beginning of the class conflicts we see today where equality is no longer the desired end state.
The drama of those decades is captured in the changes even in our music. Big Bands were replaced by electric quartets, soulful love songs replaced by talk of free love and free drugs. Our parents condemned this new “Rock and Roll” as so much noise, while we abandoned those classic orchestrations of their generation. Perhaps in our search for our own identity, we fueled the conflict and exasperated the social change.
As I look at my generation we have bought into the idea when something breaks we throw it away and get something newer and better. While this sounds good for things like televisions or refrigerators we have carried the concept into all aspects of our lives and our society. Marriage is good, as long as it is convenient to remain married. Fidelity is nice but not that important. Babies should only be born if it is not too much of a burden. Large families are expensive and should be avoided. Focusing on our children should not interfere with our work or social lives. The list goes on.
We became a generation that believed the “experts” know everything and if we would only listen to them life would be great. As a result, we now have these “experts” on mass media telling us how to fix our lives and dispose of those things that bother us. We have “experts” telling us how the climate is changing, how bad men are, how evil history is, and a thousand other things from micro aggression to the appropriate pronouns to use in every social setting. We stopped thinking for ourselves and began telling our children to just listen to the experts, but somewhere along the line, we have chosen that vilification of opposing views was okay.
(to be continued)
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