Entitlement

In rich countries like the United States and Canada, people often take their good fortune for granted.  They think that because they make a lot of money, that proves that the deserve it.  Some Americans will refer to the U.S.A. as the richest country in the world, with the clear assumption that their country's riches are clear evidence of virtue rather than luck. (Never mind that the United States largely sailed through World War II without much economic destruction, then had a generation of world dominance while their rivals were rebuilding.)

But what bugs me is the person who attacks the "culture of entitlement" among poor people, forgetting that most of the latter have always gone without advantages that he often takes for granted.  Poverty is a complex problem that can seem to have no solution, so some people are tempted to reduce it to a moral issue. "Those people don't really need welfare, they're just lazy.  Cut them off welfare and they'll get by somehow.  And if they don't get by, it's their own fault."

So-called welfare reform angers me, because its victims (including many children) are out of sight and out of mind.  People talk about the reduction in the number of welfare recipients as a success in itself, ignoring that the number who need welfare hasn't been reduced by the same amount.  People say "I don't want my tax dollars spent on those people!" and don't care about the consequences.  That tells us a lot about today's society.