A 'Me First' Society

If there is one thing I have learned over the past year it is how immensely selfish and greedy people are in this country. In pharmacy you see it on a regular basis, people want their medications right now and for no cost, despite the fact there is considerable cost and time put into their medications. It is a 'Me First' and 'Right Now' mentality that causes the majority of the problems on a daily basis.

It appears as if this has moved into every aspect of our lives. The majority of the reason we are in this economic crisis is that businesses often put their own goals ahead of the country's, and everyone else's, goals. They became extremely greedy and we are now paying the price for it. Greed is not a bad thing, it is what causes us to strive to become better than what we are, but in excess it is crippling.

One of the items which bothers me the most about elections is the emphasis on tax cuts. To the common man, a tax cut appears at instant cash in their pocket. But think of what one is giving up by not paying those taxes. Education, for one, loses funding as does several other areas of government. What happens then? People whine that their streets aren’t being fixed or that there’s too many students per teachers, yet they aren’t willing to pay more to get what they want. The local school district is facing such a crisis that they are considering closing school for January, moving to a 4 day week, closing one of the schools and eradicating classes such as Music, Gym, Art and other ‘non-essential’ classes. Everyone knows that those aforementioned classes are really what sparks creativity in young students and helps to encourage them to learn more.

Using education cuts as an example, the quality of education will decrease even farther. Today we are well behind the education of virtually every other developed nation in the world and are, in fact, dangerously close to dropping below that of some undeveloped nations. Even the brightest individual will not be able to succeed without a proper education.

Now those without kids are thinking this won’t affect them and they’ll still have that extra money from the cash cuts. Then consider this, lower education standards results in a lower quality worker. Do you want the person working on your car or building your house or perhaps even your doctor have insufficient skills compared to their counterparts in other nations? It will in fact cost more in the long run to make up for these deficiencies. Yes you have your $1,000 today, but you may wind up paying far far more than that over the coming years.

Then again no one seems to think about the big picture. Education was just an example, there are numerous other areas which would suffer. Already we have doled out trillions of dollars to big business, another debate for another post, yet we are still promising tax cuts. How the hell does that make any sense?

Detractors state that an individual should be able to keep as much of their income as possible as that was what the country was founded for. That is true, except for the fact that 21st century America has a far deeper infrastructure than 18th century America. Those days are long gone, and one needs to contribute to ‘Big Government’ to maintain our standard of living. There is one simple solution though…

We as a people must stop being so selfish. Take my education example, the amount needed to rid the district of the deficit, per person, is comparatively miniscule. I would have to give up a month of cable, PER YEAR, to rid the deficit. Think about that of a minute. Think of all the non-essential items we purchase which could be put to such better use. Those items of which we don’t need, but make us feel warm and fuzzy inside. Sure you might have five plasma tv’s in your house, but your kids won’t be able to read. God forbid you might actually feel a little difficulty in one's life (note: that statement was overly generalized).

I say tax me more, I feel I pay too little as it is. I am willing to give up the ability to purchase a few DVDs per month or that PS3 game if it means the quality of life in America will be better. And, not to sound arrogant, but you should be able to. We are the most powerful, and richest, country in the world and there is no reason we should have these problems.

It takes more of a man to help others than to help one’s self. Perhaps we need to remind the American public of that. And perhaps I’ll start by posting that right outside the pharmacy.