Hard work, sacrifice, and the freedom to rise

     I had to endure listening to a “liberal” coworker endlessly lament the shrinking of America’s middle class because the rich were too rich. I finally had to intervene and correct his ill-conceived thoughts. I began by discussing America’s last wave of immigrants circa the 1900’s. We both agreed that they were incredibly hard working. Our grandparents were incredibly hardworking and frugal. Their parents even more so which continues with each previous generation. Hard work, sacrifice, and the freedom to rise created the middle class and hard work, sacrifice, and the freedom to rise created this nation, its wealth and power. What is destroying the middle class, I explained, is not the rich creating too much of the pie. Rather, it is an ever growing percentage of the population creating too little of the pie. 

     They are becoming ever more dependent on entitlements, hooked on government-provided services, and have to work less and less and less because our nation’s massive and growing safety nets now provide a cradle to grave decent living. A large percentage of our population expects a materialistically high standard of living yet doesn’t want to do the backbreaking labor, rigorous studies, penny pinching, or sacrifice earlier generations had to do to acquire it. We are succumbing to the warm feel-good of socialism and because of this an ever growing percentage of the population no longer saves for their children’s education, their own retirement or retirement healthcare, they no longer have to worry about where the food on their table comes from, who’ll pay their utility bills, or even the roof over their head. The audaciously aloof attitudes within our massive and exponentially growing low income neighborhoods is all the proof you’ll need to see that this is, in fact, a very real phenomenon. 

     As the horsepower of our nation’s workforce dwindles and they become more entitled, our nation will decline, government spending will continue to rise, and we will continue to veer wildly off our founding path by over-burdening and over taxing our shrinking pool productive workers, violating their Constitutional right to equal protection under the law and their right to own and keep their own property. As this phenomenon continues to spread unabated, we face a mortal threat when the unproductive dependents produce socialist electoral landslides who’ll use their unchecked power to turn the page of our nation’s history into something rotten. Much to my surprise, my “liberal” coworker agreed.

 CB