Ants and Grasshoppers

The world is a serious place.

There is the Hobbesian view. In 1651, he said, life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

Now he was referring to life in a state of war in England, but I think the basic viewpoint is correct. Since the dawn of man, we've struggled to provide for ourselves. In today's society, especially in places like the United States, that is much simpler and easier. The risks of societal unrest, riots, thievery, thuggery and starvation are low.

That doesn't mean it is a cinch.

Yet, even today, there is a significant disconnect between those actions that individuals take to ensure their future well being and that of their families and their actual course of action.

We remain a society with an echo of, as David Brooks put it the "baby-boomer theology," and what I call the siren song of the baby boom generation, " Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and find yourself."

Let me know how that works out for you, will ya?

Psychology is the number one major in United States universities. Who do these people think is going to hire them? How do they think they are going to provide for themselves?

Moves are made to punish banks for lending money to people who, 'didn't know the teaser interest rate was going to go up.' What? If you don't understand what you are getting into, rent. It's not that they didn't understand, they just thought they could sell the house before the rate went up.

Unemployed people lament that they are having difficulty finding work in their fields at anything close to their former salary. They opine that they can't take lower wage work because they can't afford to pay for the 'stuff' they bought on borrowed money. This is not my problem dear. You were probably overpaid and working in an unproductive field in the first place in a job that was created or supported by government interference in some form. You should have thought of your debt load when you where buying the house or the SUV or going on vacation in Europe.

Now we are going to declare healthcare a right and pay for it collectively. We seem to have already done so with retirement. Education continues to move that way. That only leaves people to pay their own way from 21 to 67 and we'll pay for their healthcare.

Other than the fact that there isn't enough money produced by productive people to pay for all this, it seems to work pretty well.

Resentment is great among the Ants right now. We don't see why we have to give up our precious earnings to pay for the lazy and profligate ways of the Grasshoppers against our will.