Americans are being ripped off.

ARE WE SELFISH OR MISLED?

by Michael Maiello 3/17/2013 - 1:52 pm |

One of the things that most irks me about Thomas Friedman, aside from the fact that he's a terrible writer who has somehow won a huge audience, is that he is so willing to blame Americans for their own problems. This morning, for example, he cites Adam Garfinkle:

“We’re the most self-indulgent generation in American history,” argues Garfinkle, always demanding more services than we’re ready to pay for. “Too many of us want to be unbound by broader social obligations, but the network of those obligations creates the moral ballast that makes good governance possible.”

I just don't see it that way. It would be more accurate to say that we are the hardest working generations in American history. As measured by productivity and corporate profits, you have to say that what the Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millenials have accomplished is amazing.

The problem is not that we demand services that we won't pay for. The problem is that the fruits of our collective labor are granted to the very few and the very powerful. America's GDP is more than $14 trillion a year and climbing. The idea that an economy that produces that much wealth can't guaranty comfortable working and retirement lives, with healthcare, for its population, is absurd. We are not self indulgent, we are being ripped off.

No member of the Forbes 400 list can claim credit for U.S. GDP. They contribute, sure, but their work would be impossible without public school teachers, fire and police officers, janitors and executive assistants.

There's a tendency to "blame ourselves," among mainstream pundits. It works well rhetorically and makes the columnist seem, somehow, high minded. But I don't think that Americans today are any more selfish than they have been. Heck, if you look back to our founders, who owned slaves and thought that only landowners should vote, we are less selfish now.

Our social programs, in an economy as large as ours, can not only be paid for, they can and should be expanded. It's funny that Friedman started his column with the only George W. Bush quote worth remembering, about the "soft bigotry of low expectations."

That, it seems to me, is America's problem right now. People work hard but they expect too little in return. The three generations making America's economy right now should be proud of what they've accomplished and are accomplishing. They are not selfish at all, they are giving to the world. It's just that they are not being properly rewarded for their efforts.