Yesterday I had a discussion with one friend about expectations of children. In particular, we both noted that when we were children our parents expected us to take responsibility for our own happiness, and much of our own entertainment. If we were bored, it was our own fault. Many of today’s parents apparently worry incessantly about keeping their children entertained, buying them toys and iPods and computers and ferrying them to an endless stream of soccer practices, dance lessons, piano lessons and the like.
Similarly, I recall as a child always having household chores I was expected to do – take out the garbage, feed the chickens (we lived for a time on a farm), mow the lawn, etc, etc. It seems to me the idea that children ought to contribute to and be responsible for some of the family chores is a foreign concept to many parents these days.
This led to another discussion with another friend about the growing “entitlement” sense in today’s America. And related to it, the current popular concept that if something bad happens to one, someone else is to blame and ought to be sued.
All of which leads me to an interesting question. The solution to our nation’s burgeoning debt problem inevitably will require national sacrifice in the form of higher taxes and reduced services from the federal government. In World War II Americans were quite willing to sacrifice and accept rationing and higher taxes, collect scrap metal, and work long hours in munitions factories. Yet today’s politicians - Democrat and Republican alike - are clearly deathly afraid of asking the nation for any sacrifice. We are running 2 (2 and 1/2, if one counts Libya) wars, and a huge national debt, yet neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has asked Americans for even token sacrifices.
The question is: are today’s American willing to accept significant sacrifice for the long-term good of the nation or not? Are politicians right to fear asking any sacrifice of us, or are they selling today’s American’s short? I realize that I don’t know the answer to this question. I would accept – even expect – such sacrifice if it increased the odds my children and grandchildren would have a better life, and I suspect (though can’t prove) that most of my generation would feel the same. But what about the generations below me, who make up the majority of the voting public? Have they really become as hedonistic and short-sighted as Washington politicians seem to think, or are they made of sterner stuff?
An interesting question, and one with a high degree of relevance as Congress struggles to find a politically acceptable solution to the federal debt problem.
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