Published on 12, July, 2020
Why do so many people have a sense of entitlement?
I was discussing this with a friend at the weekend and we couldn't really get to the bottom of it, other than perhaps it's just been a slow erosion of society and work ethic.
They don't work, but are entitled to (net) taxpayers money, so they can have things that taxpayers can't afford, to live in areas that those taxpayers can't afford, to have holidays, to not work a job they don't want to, to be entitled to an easy and well paid job. That they have "rights" that must be treated as gospel, but not any responsibilities that are tied to those rights. That rules are just for "someone else", a whole attitude that everyone else owes them a living etc.
What is the flawed mental process where people decide that they are entitled to things just because they want them? How can anyone even attempt to justify that "want" means "entitled"?
Well Matt, what kinds of individuals do you have in mind? Who feels entitled? What is your experience in these things?
The charter of human rights does state clearly that having the right to work and not be enslaved, to live your life without harassment are rights, not entitlements.
I have read that many people are now dying in the UK because the central government was so anti welfare for both the sick and the unemployed.
Please clarify a little bit where you are coming from
It's a whole range of people, from people who feel entitled to a life on benefits, people who feel entitled to cut in front of people in queues, or in traffic etc.
So many who can work, but choose not to (which is different to people who can't work) feel they have a "right" to benefits, which is effectively taking the money of taxpayers, or to housing benefit, or tax credits etc. Topping up their income so that someone on £20k pa can live in Westminster, Chiswick, Kensington etc. when the majority of net taxpayers couldn't afford to live in those areas.
People who complain that they shouldn't have to work because all the jobs are "low paid" and they want an easy well paid job etc. The right in the UDHR isn't that people are entitled to a well paid easy job, it's not that they are even entitled to a job:
Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
It's effectively saying that they can't be enslaved, nor can they be exploited or sacked unfairly, but it doesn't give them any entitlement to a specific job or level of remuneration.
There are issues with our welfare system, but I think a lot of that comes from the ways it's been abused. For example I have a friend (and he's fallen out with most of his friends because if this) who has a girlfriend who doesn't work, she's not worked since she was 19 and she's now nearly 40, in that time she's claimed for various disabilities (mostly revolving around severe back pain, which she has even admitted in front of us is made up so she doesn't have to work), she's had a house provided for her, a car provided for her (and was complaining that under PIP they took the car off her and she "had to pay for her own" which is insane, because it's not her paying even now), goes on holiday abroad at least two times a year, has three kids by three different men which gets her more benefits, never seems short of money etc. When the rest of us have met her she feels completely entitled to live off of taxpayers. She's on forums etc of people who discuss how to lie about medical problems in a totally believable way, what symptoms to claim, what reactions to being examined in a certain way etc so that they can be believable.
Even on here some people feel incredibly entitled to benefits saying that they can work, but don't like it, find it stressful etc, whilst there are others who solider on stoically and work even though they don't like it and find it difficult but want to provide for themselves. I have a friend who was a carpenter, but was paralysed from the waist down in an car accident. He didn't decide to just do nothing with the rest of his life but retrained as a software engineer, he didn't feel entitled to live off taxpayers for the rest of his life.
I think certain kinds of politician use this dislike of whom so-called hard-working taxpayers called scroungers to deflect attention away from some of the most egregious inequalities in too many rich Western countries.
You can be exploited or low paid, or be in recipient of benefits. Your children now have not just their free milk snatched away but their school dinners too.
Isn't it interesting though that politicians do not apply austerity to their own as they manage their offshore tax havens, that their champagne is not taxed, that their incomes go up what the 99.9 percent of those struggling doesn't?
Who are the real villains here, Matt?
The stigmatising and hostility directed towards the unemployed - scapegoating actually - creates more psychological damage than being poor and in a vulnerable position in my experience.
I first graduated in 1881, with a very poor understanding of my special strengths and weaknesses. There were 500 graduates to one job.
That hostility was like having acid thrown in my face. Now, near retirement age, I am still deeply angry about what happened to me in the UK, which was bigger than I truly knew how to deal with at the time.
My arts degree had about as much chance as a snowball's chance in hell of of securing me anything like a job.
I had been bullied at school by school peers and occasionally staff too, once being bawled out by the headmaster for not breaking out a scuffle on the dinner table I was supposed to be supervising when once admittedly a little zoned out. I was yelled and shouted out at home and more recently, bullied by my exchange students abroad because they decided English were cold and detached and not worth befriending. I knew I would go ballistic if anyone started criticising me or attacking me at work, ironically it did happen at a place I worked at voluntarily.
There are exploiters everywhere but more bullying in dole offices may well not work, actually.
I was sick of the hypocrisy of the work etbic anyway so I decided to be creatively unemployed. If you are going to be hung then let it be for a sheep rather than lamb!
The fears instilled by the stupid shrinks I was sent to as a child reared their heads in full as there were dark hints that maybe I was schizophrenic. Well I never heard any voices whatsoever, though a good deal of unhealthy preoccupation had sprung up at uni over what was persona and 'true' self and that enlightenment might mean killing off parts of myself.
I am just glad I left the UK and soon will need to make that an even more binding divorce. Never had a problem with unemployment since.
Independence can be a sterling quality Matt. But I do wonder when it becomes looking for others to censure others who get help whether there isn't some kind of resentment for those who appear to have it easier.
I work hard, I work smart and I pay a hell of a lot of tax (for the 17/18 tax year probably near £40k)
The question I would like to know is what size salary do you have and how much do you really think that you need to live a comfortable lifestyle? If you are paying £40k in income tax then that's more than what the average person earns each year before income tax is taken off.
Does anybody have a sense of entitlement to earn over £100k a year on the basis that they work hard or work smart then moan at having to give £40k to the taxman leaving them with more than double what the average person earns each year after they have paid their income tax?