The Culture of Entitlement and Dependency

I want to talk now about entitlements and dependency. We've reached the turning point in America today. You can have one of two worldviews about Americans and America. You can believe that Americans are a proud, free, self responsible, self reliant, creative and pragmatic people possessed of optimism and confidence in an ever unfolding and abundant future. Or you can take the other worldview. The other worldview is you can believe that Americans are weak and dependent and not capable of accepting responsibility for themselves. Not capable of making their own choices in any areas, including virtually everything that they eat, drink and consume. And that they must be put under the control of those who are superior to them, elected politicians and the bureaucrats in charge of the thousands of government departments. These are the choices. You are either proud, free and self reliant, or you are weak, dependent and incapable of providing for yourself. Now, these are the two worldviews represented by the two political parties. You can pick the one which best represents your worldview and vote for the candidates of that party. But whatever you vote for, you know what you're going to get in advance. And you're going to get it good and hard. After spending 50 years of studying psychology and human nature, I've concluded that people are neither good nor bad. They are merely expedient. Human nature simply says that people seek the fastest and easiest ways to get the things they want right now, with little concern for the long term consequences of their actions. This has always been true, and it's the driving motivator of virtually all of human behavior. If you boil all human behavior and all economic activity down into a simple word, it would be the word improvement. Every person acts to improve their life, work, family, health or finances in some way, in whatever way they possibly can. And because people value their time and leisure, they seek the easiest way to get the things they want. Because people are impatient, they seek the fastest way to get the things they want as well. And because people are motivated toward immediate gratification, they take very little concern for the long term future or for the consequences of their actions. Most people are more concerned about the immediate pleasures that they will enjoy, rather than the long term consequences of what they do or what they ought to do. So people are neither good nor bad, they are merely expedient. And this explains most of what is going on in American society and throughout the world today. As they say, if you throw money in the street, don't be surprised if people bend over and pick it up. If you offer people free money or money with very few strings Attached, a certain number of people will reach for that money, and afterwards, more and more people will reach for that money until it can become a feeding frenzy with everyone trying to get more and more money the fastest and easiest way possible, with the least amount of effort, and little or no concern for the long term consequences of their behavior. Now this is a very simple and concise explanation of the entitlement and dependency culture that has developed in America and throughout the Western world, especially Europe. From the 1950s onward, America enjoyed a burst of prosperity that had never been seen before in human history. With high tax rates and growing wealth and prosperity, government began taking in enormous tax revenues that they quickly developed an irresistible urge to spend in all directions and on all possible pet projects. By the mid-50s, the entire interstate highway system was developed and under construction, building thousands of miles of big new roads and highways crisscrossing the entire country. There was so much money that we could do incredible things. Then in 1965, 66, the politicians in Washington concluded there was so much wealth and poverty could be eliminated completely and a new age of mankind with wealth and prosperity for all, whether or not anyone worked for it or deserved it, could be ushered in by government regulations and legislation. And thus began the war on poverty and the massive growth of the entitlement state. Now, the entitlement state was and is based on offering people money which they had not earned and which they did not deserve. By the 1960s, virtually every ethnic American group, including the African Americans from the south, were moving upward and onward into the middle class, getting their own homes and cars and putting their children into better and better schools. Crime rates were declining, illegitimate births were declining, rates of welfare and dependency were declining. And more and more new jobs absorbed virtually all the members of the workforce who wanted to work. And then came the curse of the entitlement state. Governments began offering people money to for not working. Tens of thousands of people went to work for the government with the sole job of going out and finding people and convincing them to take a government handout rather than working. Meanwhile, the politicians discovered that they could buy people's votes with their own money. They could tax people with one hand and give them free money with the other hand and get them to vote for them in the next election. As James Buchanan, the Nobel Prize winning economist, concluded, you can tell how a politician will vote by simply looking at the issues that are most popular in his constituency in the weeks prior to the election. Therefore, politicians have no morals, no values, no principles aside from re election. And they will do or say Whatever it takes to get back into office one more time. Politicians, too, are expedient. Elections then became like auctions, with politicians trying to beat their competitor by offering more and more free money to ever greater constituencies. Soon, national politics, and then statewide and local politics began a gradual race to the bottom. How much free money could you offer? How many people to get elected one more time? Now, as it happens throughout the history of mankind, every civilization goes through several phases. It starts as a frontier society and then becomes an agrarian society, and then industrial, and then it grows in wealth and influence and becomes an entrepreneurial society. As it becomes an industrial society, it becomes then a service society, and then it develops so much wealth that people think that they have enough to give to prospective voters without hurting the overall economy. The society then becomes an entitlement and welfare economy. Just as ancient Rome was the wealthiest entrepreneurial economy in the world, with the most powerful armies on earth at that time, it eventually devolved into a dependency and a welfare state more focused on bread and circuses and free money and entertainment. And eventually Rome declined, fell apart, and disappeared as a great society. Now, the challenge with giving voters free money is that there is never enough free money. If you offer them free money to vote for you this time at the next election, they say, well, what are you going to do for me? Now, free money is like a narcotic. When you first take it, it has a certain effect. But after a while, you must have more and more free money to get the same amount of benefit or pleasure. This is why people who get free money from government or any other source are never satisfied. They're never grateful. All they want is more and more free money, and they will become angry if they don't get it and quickly vote for someone else who promises to give it to them. However, government has no money of its own. The only money that government has is money that it taxes out of the pockets of working men and women. Even government jobs create little or no wealth. Government studies themselves show that it takes between three and 10 people in the government sector to do the same amount of work as one person in the private sector. And in order to buy public sector unionized votes, politicians have increased the salaries, benefits and pensions of unionized public sector workers to the point where they are paid today an average of $74,000 thousand dollars a year, when the average American earns only 50,000 a year. Not only that, but hundreds of thousands of government servants can retire in their 50s on full pensions based on their last year of work, with full benefits for themselves. And their families for the rest of their lives tied to the cost of living, which may be another 20 or 25 years. As a result, America is now bankrupt. It owes trillions of dollars worth of pensions and benefits to government unionized workers that can never be repaid without bankrupting the cities, states, and eventually the federal government who has promised all this money. So what is the solution? The solution is first of all to face the facts. It is to be honest and look at the situation as it truly is. Second, we need to begin to make changes at the margins that are raise the retirement age for government service, lower the pensions for them, and raise the age of retirement for people in the private sector as well. And put them all on 401k plans where their retirement income is tied to the health of the economy as a whole. I bet you didn't know that virtually all politicians have golden parachute retirement plans that are completely separate from what happens to the government or the economy, national or local, when they retire. These plans are complete with cost of living increases and fabulous medical benefits for the rest of their lives and their families lives. Politicians have set themselves up so that no matter what happens to the economy, they will be living the fat life after they leave government. This gives them no incentive at all to limit entitlements and welfare while they're in office, because when the chickens come home to roost, it will have no effect on their own personal income. So you do have a choice. You can vote for the continued growth of government and the continued growth of the entitlement and welfare state, which always and inevitably leads to national impoverishment and bankruptcy. Or you can vote for freedom, opportunity and economic growth accompanied by limited government, lower taxes and fewer regulations. You can go on one of two paths. Upward toward the light or down toward the darkness. You can go upward toward national prosperity and hope and opportunity. Or you can go downward toward national entitlement, welfare and dependency on ever growing government with ever higher taxes and ever worse regulations. The choice is up to you, so choose well.