Health
Wealth
Freedom
All of these require a level of personal
responsibility. You are responsible for
your own health. You are responsible to
take action when there are opportunities in wealth advancement.
You are responsible for not abusing the freedom you have.
When this country was founded, it was on the ideal of
opportunity. Individuals came here with
the idea that they could own something, improve it, and grow wealth and
stability out of it. These ideals were
not available to the poor in Europe. The
opportunity for expansion and innovation had been mostly spent, certainly at the level of land and property.
Those individuals did not come to this country expecting
to be handed a pile of wealth. The
attitude of many Americans today is that individuals should not have to be
responsible for acting on their opportunities.
That, instead of working hard, choosing to educate themselves, and gaining
responsibility to a point where they are well-rewarded, they should be given
what others given, regardless of their own effort.
This is the American Dream today: that a citizen can spend
33 hours a week watching television and still be given the resources that
individuals who are working more than 18 of those 33 hours receive.
Activists in our society are selling the myth that
individuals are not rewarded for their effort, but are instead rewarded for
their sexual anatomy, their skin color, or their parentage. What these activists fail to divulge is that
there are 10.4 million millionaires in the US.
In 2015, 300,000 Americans became
millionaires. The average millionaire is worth $1.6
million, not hundreds of millions. These
individuals – the average wealthy – have become wealthy through diligent
saving, consistent hard work, and careful spending.
But the dream that has created 10.4 millionaires in the United
States – that of hard work and frugality being rewarded with wealth – has been
replaced with a new dream. That dream is
not democratic, which sociologists mistakenly call our government, or even
republican, which is the true nature of our government organization. Rather, it is socialist.
The millennial American Dream is socialism: that all individuals,
regardless of gender or race, be given equal distribution of all wealth,
regardless of their own actions. And
Socialism truly is what many activist Americans are asking for, though many mistakenly believe they are
marching for the true definition of communism.
Investopedia.com does an excellent job of defining thedifferences between socialism and communism.
The difference is based on a single detail:
Communism means everyone owns everything, and it is all
distributed equally. By definition,
Communism has no class system.
Socialism means the state owns everything, and distributes
it all equally to the working class. By
definition, Socialism is a class
system.
Truthfully, most Americans don’t want to run the
country. They want to continue watching
TV on average of 33 hours a week, and go to their job and get a paycheck that
is more. More than what? More than whatever they are making at the
moment you ask them. Their preference is
for a government to provide them with money, health care, and entertainment
outlets.
The question is, should
this be our goal?
The Numbers
We don’t have to run a social experiment to answer this
question. It has already been performed,
and is currently being performed in other countries. Currently,
self-identifying Marxist socialist states include China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. The following numbers are all from 2016.
Country
|
Average
Income - Household
|
Cost
of Living Index
|
China
|
$8,993
|
44.76
|
Cuba
|
$8,244
|
60.82
|
Laos
|
$2,772
|
~44 (slightly higher than Thailand)
|
Vietnam
|
$2,599
|
40.11
|
USA
|
$55,775
|
75.42
|
If the implication of these numbers makes sense to you, you
clearly aren’t marching for socialist equality.
If, however, you were educated in the US school system, and the
implications of these numbers are not clear to you, you’re in good
company. I’ll spell it out.
If the ratio of income to cost in a country is an indication
of its wealth, then the higher the number on the left and the lower the number
on the right, the more margin the average citizen should have (margin is how much money you get to choose how to spend). The control for the Cost of Living Index
(CLI) is the average cost of living in New York City. That means that, on average,
Americans pay 75.42% of the cost of living
in New York. China’s citizens
pay, on average, 44.76% of the cost of living in New York.
Many Americans would argue, “Well, it’s cheaper to live in
China, so of course they make less.” But
the control isn’t variable. So if CLI is
100 in New York City, then it is 75.42 in the US, and 44.76 in China. The total of US CLI divided by China CLI
should be the same total as US average income divided by China income.
It isn’t.
China’s citizens average 16% in US income, but pay 59% in US
living expenses.
Not only does this stand as a profound travesty against
China’s citizens, but also argues dramatically against socialist practices.
GreatIST
Another failure of the US education system is to differentiate
between Socialist and Social practices.
Socialist responsibility is state-mandated “equality.” That is, the socialist is required by the
state to give and receive equally.
Social responsibility is ethical personal action. That is, the social activist feels that it is
“right” or “required” of them to give to others in need, and they do so by choice. The peaceful marches in early 2017 are an
example of social action.
Unfortunately, socialism and social structures are now confused in our citizens’
psyche. Many individuals believe that it
is the state’s (government’s)
responsibility to collect unequal distribution of wealth and redistribute it to
themselves.
In most societies, this is called theft. In the US, we call it Social Security.
In the documentary, Requiem of the American Dream, Noam
Chomsky discusses the control of the American population through the use of
advertising and PR. He postulates that
the government – who he calls the rich and powerful – “fabricated consumers” as
a way to control the population. He isn’t
far off.
Noam Chomsky said, “Any dictator would admire the uniformity
and obedience of the U.S. media.”
US citizens today are blatantly controlled by their exposure
to the media, marketing, and pop culture.
We are presented a fabricated ideal of what our lives are “supposed” to
look like, with expensive gadgetry, panic media, and the increasing use of subjective
reporting. The ability to lead the
citizens in a particular direction of panic – such as with the recent
presidential elections – has reached fever pitch. Individuals are told to ignore the fact that
the country is functionally unchanged in favor of sex-based protests, and fed
out-of-context quotes to stoke their irrational fear.
The promoted fear is simple: “Someone else is getting more than I am.”
The goal is simple: create so much fear that individuals
feel incapable of managing their own lives, and permit the government to
replace personal choice with government-mandated uniformity.
A New Identity
Uniformity is the enemy of greatness. It is the enemy of creativity. It is the enemy of intelligence, of
invention, and of change. Uniformity is
the enemy of freedom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the greatest proponents of
freedom and personal responsibility, said, “A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and
divines. With consistency a great soul
has simply nothing to do.” We are being led in a direction of "foolish consistency," where every individual should get his "fair" share, regardless of integrity or action.
Today, citizens of the US fear the opinion of other
countries. We fear their own inability
to provide for ourselves. We fear
that we won’t fit in, that we won’t make enough, that we can’t buy
enough, and that all those deficits added together will prevent happiness. We fear that, if the government won’t care
for us, and if the wealthy won’t care for us, and if our employer won’t
care for us, we will disintegrate and fail to find joy. We aren't even sure we deserve joy.
Our search for joy is in the glass of a television, in
a bottom of a glass of alcohol, and in the unattainable commodity of “more,”
which we see every day in advertisements.
Our search for joy leads us to the belief that to be same, to be
equal, to be understood is the only way to be fulfilled.
The American Dream was once to break free of the constraints
imposed by government, and to use self-reliance and ingenuity to create a life
of unlimited possibility.
Today, the American Dream is to crawl under the grate of
government protection, to be given equally much or little – so long as it is
never less than my neighbor’s.
It is time to recreate the American Dream. It is time to reclaim our identity as capable, intelligent, responsible humans. It is time to stop comparing ourselves to our neighbors - both the real neighbors that live next door to us, and the utterly fictional neighbors that live in the fantasy of our televisions. It is time to believe that, once again, we
can be self-reliant, work hard, and make for ourselves a life wherein we can reach new dimensions in the unlimited
universe of potential.