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"?
The pampered society maybe that we now live in, perhaps? With free nhs health care, dentists, sickness benefits, social security benefits etc. I would say the attitudes that you are referring to started when the government started to spoon feed people.
Debatable. Public services are one thing but claiming large amounts of benefits over a prolonged period is another thing. The benefits are the grievance of the OP.
The NHS has become a national religion although large amounts of resources are spent on all sorts of undesirable things like people who have totally left their health to rot. Part of the problem is the NHS emphasis on cure rather than prevention. This may have been a good strategy in the 1940s but it no longer is today.
With education it created a faction of society (which still exists today) that refuses to take responsibility for their children's education or pay money for educational resources because they believe that the state should provide it all. There was a big fiasco at my mother's secondary school over safety glasses for chemistry lessons.
I have thought that a better solution to cutting benefits it to require people unemployed for more than a few months to home educate their children.
When free health care was first introduced, including free spectacles, the serivice was inundated with people wanting free spectacles and free health care. As health care has grown and has got better (for want of a better word) expectations have got higher. People go to see their gp’s for all sorts of crazy things nowadays. You’re right, it’s like a national religion. Instead of going to mass to get rid of their sins, they go to the doctors.
It’s been enjoyable reading all your comments. Thank you.
That wouldn't surprise me at all. Inbuilt obselescence keeps on track g our disposable things and keeps is slavishly spending and if that is possible then why not create deliberate stagnation too. A modern, inexpensive design for spectacles that is more flattering too should not be an impossibility now.
Public services have to move with the times and changing consumer demands. The latest and greatest designer specs might be asking too much of the NHS but should customers in the 1980s really have to make do with frames unchanged since the 1940s?
This is cynical but it's plausible that deliberate stagnation is a cunning way for politicians to kill public services.
Hi Bicycle. I’m currently not working. I had a break down, starting at the end of 2016 and I’ve more or less been in bed ever since, until recently.
I am very gratefuly in receipt of Universal Credit. It doesn’t quite pay all of my bills and leaves nothing left for food, because of rent arrears and some other money I pay to the council. However, I have a roof over my head and for that I am eternally grateful.
I have never knocked the system. I can see that my choice of words may have lead you to think I was. But I can assure you, I most certainly do not knock the system, quite the opposite. If you read back on some of my previous posts you will find that I highly praise the benefits system, that despite it not being an easy system to navigate, I am extremely grateful to it. There is not a single night when I don’t go to bed and wake up when I don’t express gratitude for the opportunity to have slept in a bed. It was my work coach at the job centre who arranged for me to have a support worker from the local social services wellbeing team.
Since then I have come on in leaps and bounds. My work coach and support worker have given me the support I have always needed but never got. I don’t think I could be more grateful to the benefits system if I tried. In fact I have been slated on here for being so grateful to them. I’ve just come back from an event at my local job centre and I’ve come away with even more support and opportunities to get back outside, get walking, mixing with other people etc.
They’re helping me set up my own business because although I was excellent at my job as an independent social worker and mental health practitioner, since getting the autism diagnosis, we have realised that as much as I love the work, it’s just not right for me.
My long term plans do include getting back working with those people, but in a way that I can manage and sustain.
I have no idea how I will get my sprinter van I just know I will. I have never failed at getting what I want in life so why would I start failing now?
Yes, I am living off benefits and soup kitchens and food banks etc at the moment, but this is and always was only a temporary situation, until I got well again and then I would go back to supporting myself again financially.
But yes, I can see how my choice of words may have indicated that I wasn’t grateful to either the nhs or the benefits system. The nhs gave me my diagnosis which turned my life around so although I don’t generally see gp’s or use health services, I feel I owe my life to them for giving me the diagnosis and I will certainly be doing something to give back. As with the benefits system, they want me to talk to a bunch of politicians or something about how they have helped me, which I will do because I want to show my gratitude. So yeah, sorry for causing any miss understanding, I definitely couldn’t be any more grateful than I am for all the help I’m getting. My support worker thought I might be embarrassed, getting help from them when I used to be a social worker in the same authority. I was too grateful to even consider being embarrassed but I wouldn’t be anyway. I don’t see any shame in accepting help when you need it.
Exactly, people’s expectations were raised and they now demanded not only free specs, but ones that looked lovely as well, all in the space of 30 years and those same expectations continue to rise while personal responsibility continues to drop.
Free spectacles might have been a novelty in the 1940s and 50s but by the 1980s they had become a bad joke as the frame styles were not updated so looked downright ugly.
And what's your job, BlueRay? How much do you contribute to society through your Universal Credit, and spending a year in bed because you choose to - without being sanctioned by the DWP?
Knocking the system that supports you is the height of hypocrisy. Rank hypocrisy. Go get a job and stop pontificating with your new age crap.
How are you going to afford your camper van, I wonder. You live on benefits. Where are you going to get the money from?