The title of this post seems to be the attitude of many of our citizens lately. They want government to fix their roads, protect their food, catch the bad guys, put out their fires, and give them a myriad of different services.  But they want it all with nothing coming out of their wallet. This type of thing seems almost endemic in our society in the last decade or two.

This seems especially true for the folks in California like the ones in Greece as reported in a book entitled Boomerang: Travels into the New Third World (thanks Bob for the recommendation). I guess there are whole cities out in California going into bankruptcy because their citizens don’t want to pay for the services they demand.  As I age I am coming to be a firm believer in the old saying You get what you pay for or maybe there is no such thing as a free ride.

But this problem seems to be in other areas than taxes as well. The cable TV shows constantly show kids in their twenty looking for homes that took the generations before them years to afford. They all want a new four bedroom 2800 square foot home with the usual cherry cabinets, granite countertops, and stainless steel appliances. They want everything now and don’t seem to see the problem of only having $10,000 or often times less for a down payment! Didn’t we just go through a bust period because people were getting mortgages they could not eventually afford?  If you believe the TV shows it seems we are back in the middle of this sort of thing.  It took me fifteen years after college before I could personally afford to get my own home.  First I had to pay off my student loans and then save the required 20% down payment.  Now we seem to see kids just out of college, and even those still in college, “buying” the house of their dreams?

I imagine that history is well pretty much history in our schools today.  That is it has probably been cast aside for “more important things”. I am a firm believer that everyone should be thoroughly grounded in what our ancestors did before them.  It gives us perspective of what lies ahead for us and keeps us from continually making the same mistakes over and over again.  If we only learned the lessons from the past we would have learned of all the past “super-powers” who have met their Waterloo in Afghanistan before us. If you don’t understand the last sentence then study your history some more :)

Something for nothing is as big a folly as cutting taxes in order to raise taxes was in the Reagan administration or wars “off-budget” that therefore didn’t have to be paid for was for the Bush II administration.  You just have to realize that there is no such thing as getting something for nothing. Everything has its costs and consequences…

But what do I know….