A diseased mind, and the end wont be pleasant.
An excerpt
It is meant to be a country of rugged individualism, where self-reliance is everything, and where people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The United States has always defined itself as a nation guided by a spirit of small government and personal responsibility. And yet, it turns out that this has long since faded. As dock workers strike for outrageous pay demands, and as government hand-outs have surged, the blunt truth is this. America’s can-do culture has been poisoned by a very European sense of entitlement – and its fate will inevitably be European-style debt and stagnation.
Most people might think that the $200,000 a year an American dock worker can make is more than enough for a job that, while skilled, doesn’t exactly require a degree from Harvard or MIT. It turns out, however, that this is not enough for the quaintly named International Longshoremen’s Association. Its members have started a strike this week that will bring trade along the Eastern seaboard to a standstill. It has said it wants a 77pc pay rise over six years, along with a total ban on the automation of cranes, gates, and container moving trucks, even though China, with far lower labour costs, is developing ports that are run entirely by AI-driven robots.
But the attitude that other people owe Americans a living is far from isolated. In fact, entitlement culture is spreading almost everywhere. The latest figures from the Economic Innovation Group think tank show that government handouts now make up nearly a fifth of the average American income, double the level of 1970. While some of that can be explained by an ageing population, a far larger part of the story is surely the tendency of political leaders to shower favoured groups with “free cash” (it is hardly a coincidence that the swing states have the highest level of government dependency). Even worse, handouts have been growing at three times the rate of the more traditional form of income (otherwise known as having a job).
An excerpt
It is meant to be a country of rugged individualism, where self-reliance is everything, and where people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The United States has always defined itself as a nation guided by a spirit of small government and personal responsibility. And yet, it turns out that this has long since faded. As dock workers strike for outrageous pay demands, and as government hand-outs have surged, the blunt truth is this. America’s can-do culture has been poisoned by a very European sense of entitlement – and its fate will inevitably be European-style debt and stagnation.
Most people might think that the $200,000 a year an American dock worker can make is more than enough for a job that, while skilled, doesn’t exactly require a degree from Harvard or MIT. It turns out, however, that this is not enough for the quaintly named International Longshoremen’s Association. Its members have started a strike this week that will bring trade along the Eastern seaboard to a standstill. It has said it wants a 77pc pay rise over six years, along with a total ban on the automation of cranes, gates, and container moving trucks, even though China, with far lower labour costs, is developing ports that are run entirely by AI-driven robots.
But the attitude that other people owe Americans a living is far from isolated. In fact, entitlement culture is spreading almost everywhere. The latest figures from the Economic Innovation Group think tank show that government handouts now make up nearly a fifth of the average American income, double the level of 1970. While some of that can be explained by an ageing population, a far larger part of the story is surely the tendency of political leaders to shower favoured groups with “free cash” (it is hardly a coincidence that the swing states have the highest level of government dependency). Even worse, handouts have been growing at three times the rate of the more traditional form of income (otherwise known as having a job).
