The Age of Entitlement

On Facebook the other day, my cousin posted a very well-written blog entry that was a meant to be a wake-up call for an angst-ridden twenty-something who had publicly slammed and slandered her start-up’s management, all under the guise of not receiving a living wage. Not liking to take things as second-hand source material (thanks, Ms. Brewer!), I dug further to find the original blog posting. Both are must-reads. But quite frankly, reading the latter made me mad.

The Unequal Arguments on Income Inequality

There has been, for a few years now, a lot of hue and cry about income inequality. The obvious solution of those who think this is a drastic problem is to reallocate the funds of those with the most money to those who have the least. After all, they say, in the richest country in the world, why should anyone go without?

But wait – why stop there? Why can those in the richest country in the world not afford to provide for all? And by all, let us be truly inclusive. The ‘income inequality’ crowd like to crow about the 1%, but fail to acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of Americans fall within the 1% themselves. An American with a household income of $37,000 is better off than 99% of people in the world. In fact, according to a World Bank economist, the bottom 5% of Americans are still better off than 68% of the world. Yet we don’t see that same hue and cry to address this global issue from the folks on the streets wanting $15 per hour as a minimum wage. Why is that?