Actually, we stopped being great when we were no longer the “Land of opportunity”. I know your story, @Cruiser, and I think that you were very, very lucky to even have the chance that you did to do what what you did.
People often speak of going to college to get an education so that they can get a job better than Frycook, often telling you how they paid for their education with just such a job. They neglect to mention that tuitions are exponentially higher nowadays while incomes have remained nearly flat because the truth that 2016 is not 1966 doesn’t fit their narrative. Reality proves them wrong yet they refuse to accept that.
Or maybe they just don’t realize that being born into wealth and power makes it far easier to obtain wealth and power than for someone of more modest upbringing who has to work their balls off just to make rent and cannot afford to put food on the table… or even a table to put food on.
The work ethic disappeared because hard work ceased to make a difference. You were one of the lucky ones, @Cruiser, because you got your big break back when hard work was still rewarded. You caught the tail end of it though. Imagine if you had it all to do over again, but had to work 100 times harder for 1,000 times as long.
Of course, it’s easier to blame the “entitlement mindset” than admit that the world isn’t what it used to be. You had opportunity, so that “proves” that everyone has the same chances. By that logic, I can prove that every human on Earth is about six feet tall with dark hair and light skin.
Sisyphus rolled up his sleeves too. Look where that got him. What we have now is closer to Feudalism than any society where merit or effort lead to success. But it’s easier to call people lazy than admit that you are wrong about the world. A Conservative will do whatever they can to refute that. To them, change only happens by choice because *EVERYTHING is a choice.
But if you are so down on the entitlement mindset, then why do you feel so entitled to prosper? Who says you earned it when you worked no harder than many, many, many other people who have not reached your level of success? Is it that you feel entitled to be rewarded for your efforts even when you did nothing more than those who have failed to get rewarded have?
And before you answer that, remember that you are one of the nicer, more benevolent and altruistic men who follow Conservative ideology. I’d say you are one of the most intelligent and rational ones as well. Unlike many of your mindset though, you are not so self-entitled that you would pay slave wages for your own personal profit. That right there is almost enough to get you labelled “Socialist” by your peers who have radicalized considerably in recent years.
Yet even you seem to be unable to admit that the world has changed such that what worked for you won’t work nearly so well now that the world Conservatives think exists is in the past while non-Conservatives are living in the present. I would wager that Liberals will admit to the distinction when Conservatives admit to the hypocrisy of complaining when they feel so self-entitled themselves, though admitting that 2016 is not 1966 would be a good start.
As an aside regarding credit scores, when was the last time you went to rent an apartment or change cellphone carriers? For a long time, I could do neither because I did the “save and pay cash” thing and thus was a ghost in the system because I didn’t have enough of a credit history to have a credit score. Bad credit is actually better than no credit history at all if you want to function in 2016 America.
Society has changed. Try to keep up.
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