The “ME, ME, ME, Gotta have it Now, What’s in it for ME” Society Is Why we Have Big Government!

Sorry for the long posting title but I wanted to get that point across.

If you are like me you probably throw your hands up in the air and then pound them on a desk in frustration every time a new government social program, corporate bailout, or economic “stimulus” spending is proposed or, God forbid, passed. This pattern of course didn’t happen overnight—it has been building for decades. The most recent examples being TARP, Stimulus, Cash For Clunkers, Bank/Insurance Bailouts, Mortgage Bailouts, and of course now ObamaCare (and I heard today maybe Cash For Refrigerators!!). I am sure I am leaving many more out but you get the point…

Believe me, I am all about capitalism and wealth attainment through hard work and achievement but many Americans have been taught to believe that accumulating material things and taking on debt somehow equals wealth. It does not. Debt is debt and whether we are talking about buying a car or house you can’t afford or running up credit cards to buy the latest fashions and big screen TVs with no regard of your current or future obligations or thought about how you will pay it back if anything happens to you or the economy is the underlying problem. Like the decline of the moral culture, this is the decline of culture of personal responsibility—which is what is needed for a true free society to survive.

We then transfer that thinking into our governments and before you know it, we have bailouts, social programs, and financial policy that cater to the “gotta have it now and be damned the consequences” mentality. The worst manifestation of this is the fact that we are now TRILLIONS of dollars into debt and we are talking about adding more everyday. We then print or borrow that money and enslave future generations to pay back the debt because we don’t want to feel the short term pain that would come with “resetting” our economy.

Truly in a major way we have become a nation of wimps. But I have hope that we are starting to turn that back now and realize that we can’t always have it all, and that’s ok, as long as the government isn’t the one that’s deciding that for us. After all in the immortal words of the great Ronald Reagan, you don’t want to hear “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”