Entitlement BS

2009.01.23   prev     next

It’s been very popular, for a long time now, for psychologists to say that if you want to be rich and privileged, and you’re not, and you’re angry about it, then you have a “sense of entitlement.”

I’m calling bullshit.

In this country alone, there are thousands of individuals who are born into substantial wealth. Who never have to work a day in their lives, except on things they want to work on. Who can travel about every day in a plush, new or fairly new vehicle, taking in the sights and sampling the treats that the nation around them has to offer, without the slightest worry about how they’re going to pay the bills or what their non-existent boss will think of their casual roaming. Whose biggest financial problem is the easily avoided mistake of blowing your fortune in a risky investment when all you have to do is keep it in some good savings accounts.

And guess what? None of those individuals are entitled to that wealth. They just happen to have it. And I’m sure any “sense-of-entitlement” psychologist would say that we shouldn’t have a problem with the existence of such individuals. We shouldn’t think it’s a travesty, or a crime, or something that has to be stopped.

So that’s what I want. Independent wealth. Not to be entitled to it. Just to happen to have it.

And since I don’t have it, and don’t see any way I’m going to get it while I’m still relatively young, then yes, I’m angry.

Quite angry.

Don’t like it? Pass a law against it. Or don’t. But you’re certainly not going to affect me by telling me I have a “sense of entitlement.” Bullshit.