Wednesday, July 07, 2010

False Sense of Entitlement Blues

There is a story in the business section of The New York Times with a headline which reads American Dream Is Elusive for New Generation, which in reading makes makes me want to either scream, or weep.  The story begins this way.

After breakfast, his parents left for their jobs, and Scott Nicholson, alone in the house in this comfortable suburb west of Boston, went to his laptop in the living room. He had placed it on a small table that his mother had used for a vase of flowers until her unemployed son found himself reluctantly stuck at home.

The daily routine seldom varied. Mr. Nicholson, 24, a graduate of Colgate University, winner of a dean’s award for academic excellence, spent his mornings searching corporate Web sites for suitable job openings. When he found one, he mailed off a résumé and cover letter — four or five a week, week after week.

Over the last five months, only one job materialized. After several interviews, the Hanover Insurance Group in nearby Worcester offered to hire him as an associate claims adjuster, at $40,000 a year. But even before the formal offer, Mr. Nicholson had decided not to take the job.

Poor young Mr. Nicholson, diligently hunting for a job, in the cushy comfort of his parent’s home, upon being offered a job, and an opportunity for self-reliance, turns it down.  And why did young Mr. Nicholson turn down the job

Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder…

“The conversation I’m going to have with my parents now that I’ve turned down this job is more of a concern to me than turning down the job,” he said.

That is not reasoning, my friends, that is an outright spurning of an opportunity for self-reliance due to a false sense of entitlement inculcated through the American education system, which has caused young Mr. Nicholson to worry more about what he is going to tell Mommy and Daddy, rather than how he can pay his own way.

But to what, does The New York Times attribute young Mr. Nicholson’s inability to get a job?.

The Great Depression damaged the self-confidence of the young, and that is beginning to happen now, according to pollsters, sociologists and economists.

While it cannot be disputed that the current state of the economy is affecting young college graduates’ ability to find employment, let’s not blame it on damaged self-confidence, but rather false self-confidence instilled in America’s culture of unearned entitlement, which is supported by these statements describing young Mr. Nicholson’s world view.

“Going it alone,” “earning enough to be self-supporting” — these are awkward concepts for Scott Nicholson and his friends.

The story continues, lamenting this, that, and the other thing, including other individuals’ successes in the past, but providing no real substance as to why young Mr. Nicholson should be so special as to refuse to stand on his own two feet and take any job, other than maybe that he is “handsome as a Marine officer in a recruiting poster.”

The denouement to the NYT piece are these two paragraphs, and they are the main reason for my not knowing whether to scream, or weep, upon reading this story.

So he struggles to get a foothold in the civilian work force. His brother in Boston lost his roommate, and early last month Scott moved into the empty bedroom, with his parents paying Scott’s share of the $2,000-a-month rent until the lease expires on Aug. 31.

And if Scott does not have a job by then? “I’ll do something temporary; I won’t go back home,” Scott said. “I’ll be a bartender or get work through a temp agency. I hope I don’t find myself in that position.”

The attitude displayed by young Mr. Nicholson, in those words, perfectly illustrate why American society is failing.  A good portion of American individuals believe they are entitled to a free ride and will not get off their asses until they have milked the system, whether it be Mommy and Daddy, or the State, until the milk runs dry.

I’ve got the false sense of entitlement blues.

Posted by John Venlet on 07/07 at 11:17 AM
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