As far back as I can recall, or as far back as I’ve
been able to determine from reading, parents (American parents, Italian
parents, Chinese parents, all parents) lived simple lives and raised families
while having limited financial resources, little pleasure of their own and very
little time to themselves, but they were able to raise children while
sacrificing their own good times so the children could live better lives than
the parents had.
But now the tide is changing and the youth today are
being selfish to an alarming degree, which bodes ill for the future as they
become parents. Have today’s youth had parents who taught them to be self-reliant
and thrifty? The last two or three
generations of Americans have known so much material wealth, fun, travel and have
been inundated with so much “stuff”, that these young people just coming of age
and voting for the first time have become completely enamored with the “me
generation” and its excesses. They are now going wild for Socialist Bernie
Sanders and his promise to load up the federal gravy train and to keep giving
them more free “stuff”, with emphasis on “free” college. Young people are so
grasping for any good time they can find, it makes one fearful for how they’ll
take care of their children later in life, and it’s doubtful they will be
willing to sacrifice their partying in favor of establishing a firm and stable
family-setting for their children.
Whatever happened to working for a few years, saving
your money and then buying your stuff from your own earnings and not expect the
taxpayer to give it to you? Because of seven years of an Obama non-economy,
young people have gotten used to not having meaningful work available to them,
and have remained largely unemployed while still being able to get the latest iPhone
and otherwise living rather well in spite of being unemployed, even if it meant
living with their parents. They don’t want to consider the reality of having to
live with less material wealth.
Now they find Bernie promising them free college which
they believe will lead directly to a large salary upon being given a diploma,
and they are drooling over the free stuff that awaits them if Bernie is elected
president; it’s the logical end-product of all they’ve experienced so far. They
seem to not realize that Bernie’s promise of free college now, means higher
taxes later in order to pay for the next wave of free-loaders attending college.
They also don’t realize that “free” college means everyone will sign up for
college, which likely means that free college will soon be nationalized as the
demand for it increases and as the cost of adding classrooms to meet the demand
escalates. Before long the Bernie-schools will be pumping out thousands of fresh
graduates creating more competition for the limited number of good jobs
available. The net outcome is a loss to the voter/student who believes he/she
can get something for “free”. These free colleges will cause so many young
people to want attend college that it’s hard to see where the plumbers, auto
mechanics and carpenters we need to live comfortably will come from.
