ENTITLEMENT - August 4, 2011

The fiasco of the collapsing of the Murdoch regime in US and UK makes clear the expectation of entitlement on the part of the proprietor class in the world of the Free Market (FM) and the relative triviality of the application of that term when relating to the struggle of the poorest and least powerful among us merely to stay alive and retain the most basic of the amenities of life. The ruling of UK by the coalition government, led by a cabal of Eton men who consider that their privileged status includes the right to rule, overshadows the claim of working people to a level of at least decency, and by a margin that makes us realize that their use of the term, like that of the word “elitism” is in a large part a move to disarm the word itself to prevent its being applied to them. For just as that can refer to a statement about whether the rich have a right to rule, it can merely note that Einstein was smarter than most people. And a similar comment applies to the word “entitlement”. Anyone who has any experience with seeing how the rich in college feel they are entitled to certification as superior thinkers for routine memorization without any meaningful degree of understanding must look with scorn on their complaints against those who are merely collecting belatedly on their share of the wealth that their generation has conferred on those who have profited from the fruits of their labors. The economy, which was one of distributing a meager weal, is now so fruitful that “hot money” is plentiful in the strata of those who have never worked for a living. The growing productivity of labor in each succeeding generation creates more wealth to supply all with a comfortable living and still have plenty left to act as a spur to creativity. Indeed, it is really only those who are at most merely comfortable who are genuinely moved to that accomplishment by the promise of prosperity.