When unable to find a job, too many take years of unemployment checks to avoid taking any job that might be beneath their dignity or pay grade.
This attitude is contagious -- why be responsible when you can have others pay the bill for your choices. It's that same attitude that causes bankrupt cities that have poorly managed contracts and promised benefit packages they can't afford to seek a federal government bailout -- a bailout paid by citizens who worked hard to manage their own finances to avoid such over-spending.
Sadly, our current culture is rewarding competing values, and we're electing politicians who are systematically dismantling the values that have produced the most productive country in human history. It's time for a little reality testing and personal accountability. It's time to let failure, disappoint, and struggle provide the invaluable life lessons that are essential to any viable culture.
As the playwright George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”