Kindly Remove Your Hand From My Pocket

I confess that I don’t do a great deal of thinking over the Christmas season. I tend to be caught up in the celebration with Maggie and family and this year was particularly nice. It doesn’t mean, however  that I am totally tuned out, news stories and messages catch my attention I just tend to slot them into a mental “bring-forward” file to deal with later.

And now is later.

A couple of related things caught my notice over the holidays.  The first was Verizon’s attempt to add a two dollar convenience fee charge to its customer charges and the second was a highly accusatory letter written by the Dean of Ottawa University about the fact that the University was not proceeding with plans to build a new multi-million dollar school of nursing. I gather the Dean hasn’t had the opportunity to catch up on the latest state of the economy or he wouldn’t be so irresponsible as to put his desires ahead of practical fiscal reality.

As unrelated as these two items seem to be, they are more connected than they first appear and they got me thinking about the fact that the unwarranted sense of entitlement isn’t a monopoly of the middle and lower class. The elite in our democracies also have a well-developed sense of being “owed” by others in order to achieve their objectives.

photo: USA Today

Banks used to provide a wide range of personal services in their branches and charged fewer fees. Now most of us bank online, by telephone or at an ATM machine and you would think that in an era where self-service has become the norm, fees would decline. You’d be wrong. There are more fees now than ever and many of them are charged for making the bank’s life easier.

Credit card rates have completed disconnected from the prime lending rate and are out of all proportion to the actuall cost of borrowing incurred by banks. Bank of America even went so far as to tack a $5.00 service fee onto the first transaction of users of the debit cards issued by the government to those receiving social assistance.

Retailers jumped on the environmental band wagon and started charging for the bags they used to provide for free in order for us to carry out our purchases. Think about that. It has nothing to do with going green and everything to do with squeezing a few more pennies from each and every customer.

 Verizon, who I mentioned earlier, introduced a $2.00 convenience fee, a charge to customers who opted to pay their bill by credit or debit card. Excuse me? You want to charge people for paying their bill? It’s small wonder we have had tent cities in our parks.

There are countless examples and I could fill dozens of posts with them but these illustrate the point. The elite in our democracies are completely out of touch with reality when it comes to what is equitable and what is not.

Governments have so completely buggered up the tax act that we often are charged sales tax on another tax as if one tax was actually a consumer product or service. As for income tax, the rules have become so convoluted even accountants are having difficulty keeping up. It is no longer about an equitable contribution by all citizens towards their common good, it is rigged in favour of those who can buy their way out of paying their fair share...and the majority of them aren't in the 1%.

Banks, retailers business, government and even some media have lost their perspective. It’s become an orgy of grasping for pennies at the expense of those who actually still have a few pennies to spend.

photo: Occupytogether.com

It isn’t just our friends at Occupy who have an overwhelming and unwarranted sense of entitlement that justifies in their minds stabbing police officers, attacking churches and causing millions in vandalism as non-violent protest. It is the other side of the social coin that is equally out of control,

Occupy chants about class warfare but they’re wrong. It’s the haves and the nave nots squeezing the hell out of those of us in the middle who are simply trying to live responsible lives to the benefit of our families and our communities.

Somewhere along the line, the elite who have longed challenged everyone else to work hard to succeed and to quit whinning hav lost sight of the fact that when they gouge the rest of us they earn nothing.  Theft is theft and whether it is done by mask and gun or in the guise of fees, taxes or saving the planet, someone elseis putting their hand into our pocket and taking our money for their benefit. When bankers and brokers who have often criticized government policy on social welfare take bailout money to cover their losses, they have put themselves on a form of corporate welfare and are no different than those they criticize.

Personally, I find it more than annoying. I find the attitude of entitlement to be every bit as deplorable as that of university students who think that post secondary education is a right and someone else should pay their tuition. We used to earn our way through life  but now too many of us feel entitled to have others finance our lives as we pursue whatever it is we think we should pursue.

photo by Mario Zucca

For me, it comes down to this. We all earn our money and should have the right to spend and enjoy it as we see fit. We should agree to pay a percentage to government to maintain and provide common services like transportation, defense, communications and health care but whatever is left in our wallets is ours and it should be left to us to use it as we wish.

I’m getting just a touch tired of banks, protesters, activists, environmentalists, corporations, unions, government and a few lesser lights feeling you and I should be paying them money whenever they have a new fee, a cause or "want".  I'm tired of convenience fees charged by everyone from banks to cell phone companies. I'm tired of tax on tax and I'm tired of charities and others reimbursing donors through tax deductions that are basically nothing more than my money and yours.

It's very simple actually....it's our money. Get your hand out of our pockets and earn your way through life.

I’m not going to pack up a tent and move downtown to a park any day soon but I am going to choose who I do business with more carefully. Verizon and BOA were forced to back down from their outrageous fee gouge just 24 hours after they were announced thanks to the outcry online. If enough of us choose more carefully, if enough  of us speak out both in person and online when some group in the elite or on the other side loses its mind again and starts slinging new charges around….if enough of us vote with our wallets, we just may have a shot at reigning in some of this orgy of entitlement.

We might not succeed but it’s guaranteed we have no chance if we don’t try.

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