Opinion

The Current Trouble With America Means Future Trouble For America

As far back as I can recall, or as far back as I’ve been able to determine from reading, parents (American parents, Italian parents, Chinese parents, all parents) lived simple lives and raised families while having limited financial resources, little pleasure of their own and very little time to themselves, but they were able to raise children while sacrificing their own good times so the children could live better lives than the parents had.

But now the tide is changing and the youth today are being selfish to an alarming degree, which bodes ill for the future as they become parents. Have today’s youth had parents who taught them to be self-reliant and thrifty?  The last two or three generations of Americans have known so much material wealth, fun, travel and have been inundated with so much “stuff”, that these young people just coming of age and voting for the first time have become completely enamored with the “me generation” and its excesses. They are now going wild for Socialist Bernie Sanders and his promise to load up the federal gravy train and to keep giving them more free “stuff”, with emphasis on “free” college. Young people are so grasping for any good time they can find, it makes one fearful for how they’ll take care of their children later in life, and it’s doubtful they will be willing to sacrifice their partying in favor of establishing a firm and stable family-setting for their children.

Whatever happened to working for a few years, saving your money and then buying your stuff from your own earnings and not expect the taxpayer to give it to you? Because of seven years of an Obama non-economy, young people have gotten used to not having meaningful work available to them, and have remained largely unemployed while still being able to get the latest iPhone and otherwise living rather well in spite of being unemployed, even if it meant living with their parents. They don’t want to consider the reality of having to live with less material wealth.

Now they find Bernie promising them free college which they believe will lead directly to a large salary upon being given a diploma, and they are drooling over the free stuff that awaits them if Bernie is elected president; it’s the logical end-product of all they’ve experienced so far. They seem to not realize that Bernie’s promise of free college now, means higher taxes later in order to pay for the next wave of free-loaders attending college. They also don’t realize that “free” college means everyone will sign up for college, which likely means that free college will soon be nationalized as the demand for it increases and as the cost of adding classrooms to meet the demand escalates. Before long the Bernie-schools will be pumping out thousands of fresh graduates creating more competition for the limited number of good jobs available. The net outcome is a loss to the voter/student who believes he/she can get something for “free”. These free colleges will cause so many young people to want attend college that it’s hard to see where the plumbers, auto mechanics and carpenters we need to live comfortably will come from.

These youthful high expectations and the limited reality of America’s current economic situation, which will only worsen under a new Democrat/socialist/progressive administration, should frighten young people, but they are begging for more of what Obama has dished out and expect even more from the next president. This is called greed and it only leads to bad things when people expect something for nothing and believe they can vote their way to prosperity.

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Dave King

Retired AT&T supervisor.

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