The life I have now is not the life I have always lived nor did it come to me easily. I’ve travelled some dark roads in my life. I’ve been successful and I’ve been so broke I was homeless for awhile. I’ve achieved a few things and failed at others. Each brought its own lessons about life and about who I an as a person and each brought me closer to the life I now live.
It wasn't easy getting here but it was worth the journey and for all the difficulties and challenges I have encountered along the way, I consider myself blessed.
I mention this because someone who doesn’t like the things I write about, or the opinions I hold, tweeted that I was consistently wrong about everything and that my opinions were shallow. It didn’t offend me. I’ve had dialogue with this particular individual before and found him remarkably under-informed. He is less than half my age, hasn’t lived the life I’ve lived nor experienced the things I’ve experienced. His juvenile evaluation of me almost made me laugh and would have except that it saddens me that there are so many coming up through the current generation who just don’t get it. They remind me of a lyric from a Jude Cole song.
“There are people dyin’ on the streets
sure don’t make the news,
while others are livin’ up on the hill
singin’ the white boy blues.”
It never ceases to amaze me how many people today, especially young people see themselves as victims when they live a pretty privileged lifestyle compared to more than half the world’s population. There are hundreds of millions living in poverty and circumstances so destitute that starvation is almost an improvement for them. Others face terrible political oppression. They are imprisoned, tortured and slaughtered while university students in Quebec, Canada protest and riot in the streets over the equivalent of a seventy cent a day increase in their already heavily-subsidized tuition. It's like fighting over the cost of a cup of coffee a day.
They demand it as an entitlement. They condemn those already providing more than 80% of the cost of university for them because they think it's hard to attend school while working to pay for their share. Of course it's hard and it was no less difficult for the generations who went before and maybe even harder because our tuition was not subsidized.
Most of the folks in Occupy cry poor mouth while texting each other on their $500 smart phones They demand respect even as they show no respect for the rights or the property of others and that, my friends, is not the political statement of well-informed and thoughtful gjroup. It is a temper tantrum caused by spoiled, self-absorbed and adolescent thinking.
Unfortunately, it’s the kind of thinking that too many are bringing to the serious issues we face in society today. We’re in debt beyond our ability to pay comfortably but people demand more entitlements even as we are forced to borrow money just to pay the interest on the debt we already have.
Standing in solidarity against austerity, as so many did on May 1st, is like being on the Titanic and standing in solidarity against icebergs. When the ship goes down, all that protest will have achieved nothing because simply blaming the people who owned the ship isn’t going to save anyone.
But that’s what we do now. We blame others, especially the rich; they are after all nothing but greedy, dishonest crooks who are the author of all of our misfortunes. Students, Occupy, Unions and countless other groups demand that the rich pay their fair share without a moment's consideration for the less than 'fair' share they pay or the more than 'fair' share they already take. In the United States, the zero income tax club is made up of more low and low middle class incomes than millionaires and the bottom 20% of income earners receive back $8.00 in government largesse while the top 20% receive less than $1.00 in taxpayer benefits for every dollar they each pay.
In Canada, the average Canadian pays over $40,000 per year in cumulative taxes from all levels of government and including all forms of taxation. Considering that the average income in Canada is only $41,000, it's pretty clear that the bulk of that tax is being paid by higher income earners.
In Canada, the average Canadian pays over $40,000 per year in cumulative taxes from all levels of government and including all forms of taxation. Considering that the average income in Canada is only $41,000, it's pretty clear that the bulk of that tax is being paid by higher income earners.
There are some in the 1% who definitely need a good slap on the side of the head, there is no question about it but they aren’t the majority. Many who are wealthy came from nothing and what they have, they earned. Bill Gates didn’t even finish college while Steve Jobs came from a broken, lower middle-class family. Their circumstance didn’t prevent them from building two of the most successful corporations in the world or from becoming wealthy. It also didn’t provide them with the opportunity to avoid taxation.
Like most of the wealthy, they do pay income tax along with, capital gains taxes, property taxes, surtaxes, sales taxes and corporate taxes. They also donate a significant amount of money to charity which does reduce their income tax burden but which would you rather they pay.........the government who will squander it or charities who will put it to direct good use in the community? Either way, they give the money to someone.
Those who have been successful have achieved their riches because they took risks. They invested their own money, their talent and their ideas. In the process, they created jobs for the rest of us and just like the students in Quebec, we show our appreciation by blaming them for their success and what that success brought most of us. I suppose we'll blame them when they get fed up, leave the country and take their companies and their jobs with them.
It doesn't get much more stupid than attacking the very people and companies that many students will depend on for jobs when they graduate.
Those who have been successful have achieved their riches because they took risks. They invested their own money, their talent and their ideas. In the process, they created jobs for the rest of us and just like the students in Quebec, we show our appreciation by blaming them for their success and what that success brought most of us. I suppose we'll blame them when they get fed up, leave the country and take their companies and their jobs with them.
It doesn't get much more stupid than attacking the very people and companies that many students will depend on for jobs when they graduate.
Even the President of the United States worked to get where he is. He borrowed the money to go university, eventually became a senator and eventually the world’s most powerful politician. In a speech about a week ago, he admitted to having only repaid his student loans eight years ago which means he was still carrying some of those loans when he was first elected to the senate.
There are countless examples of people like this, people who started with nothing or very little but who succeeded as the result of hard work and perseverance. You’ll find them in professional sports, entertainment, the professions, finance, technology and pretty much every other field you can think of. You’ll find even more people who failed and blamed others for their circumstance as a result.
The simple truth is that some people aren’t poor because others are wealthy and the irony is that so many who blame the rich are themselves striving to achieve the same thing.
The Internet is littered with web sites offering easy ways to make money on line and most of them are doing a booming business. There are wealth seminars and get rich quick schemes in real estate, the stock market and a myriad of products nobody ever heard of.
Some think that poker or some other form of gambling is the road to easy wealth while others, too lazy to figure out the intricacies of the strategies in those casino games simply purchase lottery tickets week after week. The lotteries are making a killing and very few casinos go broke.
Everybody wants more but the difference today is that fewer people today are prepared to earn it. They are impatient or see themselves as victims and have an unwarranted sense of entitlement as a result. That leads to expectation that someone else is responsible; someone or something else should pay. They don’t care who gives it to them; it can be government, the rich or a windfall from a lucky lottery ticket. Easy money is the goal, entitlement is the driver.
But the simple reality is that most successful countries were built by people who wanted to achieve on their merit. Most failed countries are the result of too many demanding too much that they hadn’t earned. We’ve all seen more than a few examples of that.
At the end of the day we all have a choice to make. We can either continue to see ourselves as victims who demand that others owe us a living or we can take responsibility for our own individual lives.
Take a crack at guessing which provides not only the most opportunity in the long run but the most self-respect and satisfaction. If you guessed seeing yourself as a victim who is owed some of what others earned simply because you find your life difficult, you might want to take a trip to Greece before you lock in your final answer. It was that thinking that led to where they are now.
RELATED
Greed!
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/greed.html
Entitlement Addiction
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/entitlement-addiction.html
Sun Media: Quebec's rebels without a clue
http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/05/02/quebecs-rebels-without-a-clue
Greed!
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/greed.html
Entitlement Addiction
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/04/entitlement-addiction.html
Sun Media: Quebec's rebels without a clue
http://www.ottawasun.com/2012/05/02/quebecs-rebels-without-a-clue
© 2012 Maggie's Bear
all rights reserved
The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others
