Americans never used to whine.
Now everyone does it from the president on down.
There was a time before whining became a national pastime that we don’t look to the government to solve all of our ills and meet every one of our needs and desires. We didn’t whine when times got tough. We simply redoubled our efforts or blazed new trails.
Whiners didn’t take great risks and leave Europe and Asia - as well as families and a way of life - to set sail toward America. Whiners didn’t forge a new concept of government that exists for the people and not the rulers. Whiners didn’t pick up arms and secure freedom and liberty.
Whiners didn’t open the new frontier west of the colonies. Whiners didn’t explore the West. Whiners didn’t pack up everything they owned in a jalopy and head to California to escape the Dust Bowl.
Whiners didn’t mobilize to defeat the Axis Powers. Whiners didn’t put a man on the moon, discover vaccines, or give birth to the computer and Internet Age.
We whine because we’ve never had it so good.
You think the housing crash is tough? In the Great Depression when people stopped making payments for two months they were gone. They didn’t linger around rent free for two years and then expect the bank to pay tem money to move out.
There was no safety net and no food stamps. There is hunger today but you can argue a lot of it has to do with what we eat and the inability of some - or the lack of desire - to go back to basics using food staples and cooking. It also involves not cutting lose with non- essentals such as cable TV to stretch the dollars.
And yes there is poverty but is it worse than 60 years ago?
Politicians - who play off America’s incessant whining - always ask around election time whether you think you are better off than you were two or four years ago.
If you answer you’re not, why not? Is it because you can no longer buy $100 jeans, high tech toys, or a new car? Is it because you bought more house than you could afford?
What about the things that matter? Are you healthier than you were four years ago? That, in many ways is a personal responsibility. Are you less in debt? Again, unless you had a severe change in your financial status by losing a job or having hours and pay cut, a lot of the reasons you may owe more has to do with personal choices.
Generations of Americans labored and spilled their blood so this country could be a land where people could have the freedom, for the most part to do what we want in our personal lives without being dictated how we should lead our lives by the government.
But now that we have that chance and we fail in some way, we don’t want to tough it out. Instead we want government to bail us out.
Delayed gratification in a world of credit cards and home equity lines was for suckers.
It’s tough to have empathy for someone who is whining who employed bad judgment to drive themselves into a financial hole. Yes, there were some people who were true victims but let’s be honest. There was a reason why a lot of people resisted the deals that were too good to be true when it came to buying homes with nothing down, overstated income, and loan payments that were artificially low.
Some of the people who didn’t whine when the foreclosure crisis started, got out from under their house and took the financial hits and went back into renting are now successfully buying a home again. Yes, it is a lot less home but instead of whining they dug in for three or so years, did what they had to do and then proceeded back into home ownership by living within their means. It’s amazing what people can do if they don’t rely on whining.
It’s the whiners who essentially embraced the massive bailouts. Buying up companies at inflated prices, buying homes one couldn’t afford or doling out massive bonuses to people who were putting their own personal wealth interests ahead of investors were simply business transactions to whiners.
It is the non-whiners - the people who live within their means and who go forward day-in-and-day out trying to do the right thing are what powers America. They see contracts as a moral obligation made between two parties and not something you ignore when the going gets tough.
Unfortunately, we’ve made whining profitable. Whine that your company is “too big to fail” and - presto - you get billions in taxpayer subsidized bailouts. Forget the fact it was bad decisions, emphasis on quick short-term returns and not long-term investments that got most companies into a pickle.
All of those Third World economies that are starting to gain on us aren’t composed of people who are whiners.
It’s time to stop the whining and to get America back to what it does best when it runs into adversity: Dig in and blaze new trails.
Now everyone does it from the president on down.
There was a time before whining became a national pastime that we don’t look to the government to solve all of our ills and meet every one of our needs and desires. We didn’t whine when times got tough. We simply redoubled our efforts or blazed new trails.
Whiners didn’t take great risks and leave Europe and Asia - as well as families and a way of life - to set sail toward America. Whiners didn’t forge a new concept of government that exists for the people and not the rulers. Whiners didn’t pick up arms and secure freedom and liberty.
Whiners didn’t open the new frontier west of the colonies. Whiners didn’t explore the West. Whiners didn’t pack up everything they owned in a jalopy and head to California to escape the Dust Bowl.
Whiners didn’t mobilize to defeat the Axis Powers. Whiners didn’t put a man on the moon, discover vaccines, or give birth to the computer and Internet Age.
We whine because we’ve never had it so good.
You think the housing crash is tough? In the Great Depression when people stopped making payments for two months they were gone. They didn’t linger around rent free for two years and then expect the bank to pay tem money to move out.
There was no safety net and no food stamps. There is hunger today but you can argue a lot of it has to do with what we eat and the inability of some - or the lack of desire - to go back to basics using food staples and cooking. It also involves not cutting lose with non- essentals such as cable TV to stretch the dollars.
And yes there is poverty but is it worse than 60 years ago?
Politicians - who play off America’s incessant whining - always ask around election time whether you think you are better off than you were two or four years ago.
If you answer you’re not, why not? Is it because you can no longer buy $100 jeans, high tech toys, or a new car? Is it because you bought more house than you could afford?
What about the things that matter? Are you healthier than you were four years ago? That, in many ways is a personal responsibility. Are you less in debt? Again, unless you had a severe change in your financial status by losing a job or having hours and pay cut, a lot of the reasons you may owe more has to do with personal choices.
Generations of Americans labored and spilled their blood so this country could be a land where people could have the freedom, for the most part to do what we want in our personal lives without being dictated how we should lead our lives by the government.
But now that we have that chance and we fail in some way, we don’t want to tough it out. Instead we want government to bail us out.
Delayed gratification in a world of credit cards and home equity lines was for suckers.
It’s tough to have empathy for someone who is whining who employed bad judgment to drive themselves into a financial hole. Yes, there were some people who were true victims but let’s be honest. There was a reason why a lot of people resisted the deals that were too good to be true when it came to buying homes with nothing down, overstated income, and loan payments that were artificially low.
Some of the people who didn’t whine when the foreclosure crisis started, got out from under their house and took the financial hits and went back into renting are now successfully buying a home again. Yes, it is a lot less home but instead of whining they dug in for three or so years, did what they had to do and then proceeded back into home ownership by living within their means. It’s amazing what people can do if they don’t rely on whining.
It’s the whiners who essentially embraced the massive bailouts. Buying up companies at inflated prices, buying homes one couldn’t afford or doling out massive bonuses to people who were putting their own personal wealth interests ahead of investors were simply business transactions to whiners.
It is the non-whiners - the people who live within their means and who go forward day-in-and-day out trying to do the right thing are what powers America. They see contracts as a moral obligation made between two parties and not something you ignore when the going gets tough.
Unfortunately, we’ve made whining profitable. Whine that your company is “too big to fail” and - presto - you get billions in taxpayer subsidized bailouts. Forget the fact it was bad decisions, emphasis on quick short-term returns and not long-term investments that got most companies into a pickle.
All of those Third World economies that are starting to gain on us aren’t composed of people who are whiners.
It’s time to stop the whining and to get America back to what it does best when it runs into adversity: Dig in and blaze new trails.
