Let me call your attention to a post on The Housing Bubble Blog and a comment made in response. A 30-something person is dismayed when a couple in their 50s/60s buys a house, rents it out, keeps the rent and stops making mortgage payments, leaving their tenants at risk of eviction. “I’m frankly disturbed by the situation. I think it’s really shady for someone (in this situation) to be taking money from a renter and not put it toward the mortgage. Every month, they have been taking that money knowing they are not using it to make their house payments. I just think it’s wrong and puts the renters in a bad position…I can see why they would want to do this to help themselves, but again, it’s affecting the whole neighborhood. As far as how I feel personally/morally about the whole situation (and the fact that this is happening all over America) is that people really disappoint me.”
Now these circumstances are specific, but the response of one commenter could apply to much else in this era. What happens when most people, and particularly younger generations, realize they are getting robbed and start thinking like this?
The comment: “I can really empathize with this. The best advice I could give here would be to say it’s one thing to fulfill one’s obligations, it’s quite another to be a schmuck and take it on the chin while others shrug and walk away. You have to do what’s right for you and your family and that’s your first obligation. The ‘rules’ have changed, evidently and there’s nothing moral about playing by the old rules when everyone else is playing by the new rules, especially if you’re going to get eaten alive. It’s a sad commentary, but even the rule of law in this country seems to be capriciously applied, at best. So the most moral thing for decent folks to do is to be aware of how circumstance are and prepare to defend oneself…Don’t be a schmuck and sacrifice yourself for institutions and people that don’t deserve it. Do what you have to do to protect yourself.”
I know the feeling, from a public policy point of view. I got it when I realized that our charitable contributions equaled our state income tax payments one year, and surmised that whereas we made sure most of our charity went to those worse off than we were, most of our state taxes were going to people who were better off than we were but didn’t think they were, such was the extent of their feelings of entitlement. Five years ago, in my platform as a candidate against the state legislature, I promised to stand up for personal and social responsibility, but even then I had a growing feeling of unease. I put it this way.
“Some people are grateful for what they have and try, over the course of their lives, to contribute more to others than they have received themselves. I am very grateful to my neighbors who have worked to build up our community, running soccer leagues, organizing the rehabilitation of the parks, working to improve the schools, providing services as volunteers in churches and other organizations, and taking care of their family members. I am also grateful for the many assets and institutions provided to us by prior generations, assets and institutions that contribute to our lives today. New York State politics, however, is dominated by those seeking to leave life with a "profit" by imposing a loss on others. Quickly acclimated with and bored by whatever they have, made to feel envious and inadequate by television commercials selling what they don't, far too many people feel needy today. Our state capital is a place where people are focused on themselves.”
“If you are a net contributor to those with greater needs, you are a good person. If you are a net contributor to those with a greater sense of entitlement, and a greater willingness and ability to work the system, then you are a sucker. Our state politicians have become perpetual incumbents by pandering to the organized selfish, and telling them what they want to hear. As the un-politician, I would tell it like it is, and try to let the losers know who they are. In doing so, I would represent the responsible and considerate people of this community and this state, and would allow their voices, for once, to be heard. And I would work to ensure that their net contributions go to the needy, and to future generations, not to the greedy.”
Too late, perhaps, as this commenter – and how many others–seem to believe.
For five additional years, I have seen more and more advantages seized by those who already had unearned, unneeded advantages. And they are not even forced to acknowledge the effect of what they do on others, as those pandering to them provide the rationalizations — or secrecy — for them. Challenging undeserved feelings of entitlement doesn’t win any popularity contests. You can read what I wrote five years ago, and see if anything has changed up in Albany. Those who control our institutions not only lack empathy, but also lack enlightened self-interest. They’ll keep grabbing and grabbing until there is nothing left to take, as if they lacked the capacity to do otherwise, and for most people (and in particular younger generations) those institutions have nothing left to offer. At that point most people will be forced to pay only by force. And so we are heading for an institutional collapse.
Perhaps younger generations will be able to build new institutions in which they will be able to be responsible to each other, and their own parents if they deserve it, without being schmucks. But it will probably have to be off the books and underground the way things are going, as if we were a Third World country (those countries are now called “developing,” a term not applicable to a country and state doing the reverse).