what is wrong with Americans today? Or is it me?

[nop169]

First let me apologize for ranting....! I own a small business & my wife is a RN. We have 3 children (11 to 24). We have a 24 acre farm & live a simple country life. We pay our bills & accept responsibility for our actions. All that being said - what is it with people today? The majority of people I see the last few years have no pride - no honor & no integrity. They are waiting on a government handout & expect you to take care of their problem or supply their needs - they have no compunction about lying, stealing or taking whatever they want. I am so frustrated!!! I am 40 my wife is 39 & we have both worked 6 days a week for the last 20 years to have a small farm, house & ecducate our children. We choose what is important to us & do not hesitate to pay for it. If we give you our word - you can bank on it.
I realize the economy is tough - my business is just on this side of folding under - and I realize some people have habitual issues.... but what happened to facing the consequences of your actions? Of being responsible for your children? Of teaching honor & integrity? If my business goes under - I still will pay for my loan - even though it is not going under from my managing but rather from this economy.... I am not being callous about the loan - my land is the collateral for this loan & I will have to work hard to "re-pay" it... possibly even 2 jobs - but that was my choice & the risk I took going into private business. In fairness though - we did well with our feed & farm business until late last year when our local economy crashed & 7000 people in our area were unemployed within months...
But what alarms me most is how people are losing any integrity they had... in my area you can write a bad check and as long as it is below 1000.00 there is nothing I can do but to place a lein on your property (if you have any) - my local magistrate no longer will issue a warrant - and to place the lein it costs me another 80.00. This has become known & now I have people who are writting bad checks intentionally & others who refuse to pay their account because they know nothing will happen to them!
And the children! Where my store is located I have about 9 children aged 4 to 14 who walk the streets with no supervision - no one checks up on them for 5 & 6 hrs at a time... one 12 year old actually stayed the whole weekend at my business & home with my 11 year old - the problem is that we have never meet his parents nor talked to them - couldn't find them all weekend to let them know he was ok & when I found them Sunday nite they did not even ask where he had been or who we were!
The "right" to have & the I am "owed" mentality blows my mind! This was once a rural, moral, decent area where people worked hard, you could trust their word & doors remained unlocked even at night - now - after a year & half of economic upheavel - I do not recognize the place, the people or the society that is in play. I refuse to become the same! And I will teach my children to be honest people with integrity!
And God knows the simple, farm based lifestyle is disappearing fast!
So my question is What has happened to the American people? family? Are all of you seeing this trend also? Or am I just one of the last of a dying breed? Is this what our society will become?

 

[Wifezilla]

We have had to move quite a few people to a "cash up front" basis lately.

 

[luvarabhorses]

People can not find jobs where they make enough money to pay their living expenses. What you are witnessing is desperation.
It is amazing to me how much things cost. People who were living paycheck to paycheck when the economy was good aren't making it now that the economy is bad.
There is also a huge amount of the population who just don't know or understand how to live within their means. I have a good friend getting ready to lose her house that thinks something is magically going to happen that will change her situation. She feels that small amounts of money she could easily save would not make a difference.
I spent a lot of time with my Grandparents who grew up in the depression, and I feel I have absorbed a lot of their thrifty nature. I am thankful for that.

Pray that these people you describe figure out a way to make it without cheating everyone else.
Sometimes I feel like we are in a similiar economy to Russia when it was communist and focused all of its money and resources on producing weapons resulting in a war related economy. People starved.

 

[horsejody]

Do you mean that it's not really the responsibility of government and society to take care of our every need? Do you mean that able bodied people that are too good to work a dirty job shouldn't be able to collect a welfare check? Do you mean that it's wrong to screw up kids or pretend that minor problems with them are big ones so that there will be an extra SSI check? Do you mean that a person shouldn't buy stuff they don't need just because they don't have enough money. Well, we will just have to fix this by raising taxes on the working people and increasing all welfare payments.

****FYI - I am being sarcastic****

 

[19Dawn76]

I am going to throw my 2 cents in here. I was married at 19. We could not afford for me to go to college until I was 26. That was how long it took us to pay off my husbands student loans. When I was in college (a nursing program) I was the only person that had loans because I had to. The other girls had loans because they wanted extra money ( I say extra bacause the grants they had paid for school plus about 2,000 a semester for their pockets) . So these people are going to school for free then borrowing money from the goverment interest free so they can get a check for 7, 000 to 10, 000 a semester to live off of. Most of them had day care vouchers for their kids and food stamps to buy food. I was dirt poor bringing my lunch to school everyday and waving bye to them while they ran down to the chinese buffet for lunch. So if you want a good free ride have a bunch of kids young when there is no way you can provide for them and the goverment will step in and give you a good smooth ride. I did not have a child until later in life when we were sure we could take care of our child ourselves. Sometimes I feel like I did everything all wrong maybe we should of just lived together and had 2 kids, taken the food stamps and grants, n ot worried about healthe insurance with good maternity coverage cause medicaid would of covered the delivery. At least then when tax time comes around and we have to pay in money in addition to the huge amont of money we already paid I could feel like I actually OWED it.

 

[PlymouthRocker]

You have one reputation, and I commend you for guarding it even when others make it difficult.

I believe you when you mentioned about the child who stayed with you for the weekend, but I cannot believe the parents! UNBELIEVABLE!!

 

[Big Chicken Little]

It won't be long before America becomes a 3rd world country. I teach school and the kids have little interest to learn ..it is a push all the time. Our government lies to us and it is the people who know how to work the system pay for very little. While our kids are at school fooling around the chinese are studying 6 days a week....where will it leave us in 20 in years ...God Bless US !!

 

[Wifezilla]

What you are witnessing is desperation.

Big difference between desperation and irresponsibility. Desperation I can understand. I take care of that when I can by donating to God's Pantry. They give out free food and clothing to needy families. I took a huge shipment of bread to them yesterday along with a bag of winter clothes. If I see someone in need, I refer them to there.

What I am seeing more and more (and I am not the only one it looks like) is irresponsibility. REWARDED irresponsibility.​

 

[6chickens in St. Charles]

Quote:
I feel this way, too, I am an RN, I worked nights and weekends and paid all my kid's medical bills and paid cash for all my (childbirth) deliveries; in doing so, I hardly have any decent time with my family! When I can be home they cannot be. I work all weekend, 12 hour shifts (14 hours really) and often take care of public aid patients who have cable TV and smoke cigarettes and they're obese, they're so WELL FED on public aid, and they threaten to sue us for all sorts of garbage. I sometimes feel like "I am the stupid one here", because I am so tired from my hard work, and those people don't work at all but they can afford cable TV! I hope that providing a home for my family is the right thing to do. Its hard to tell. Sometimes it seems the public aid recipients are better off.

 

[Mojo Chick'n]

Quote:
You know what taught ME this lesson? a change jar. Every child and adult (or childish adult

) should have one. (I didn't start mine til I was older, but hey, better late than never).

Throw all your change into it every day and in a month or two count (don't spend) the money. You'd be amazed how much cash is in that jar. Change that gets lost in the couch or the car floor, or change that we simply sweep up off the floor and toss out (I never throw out even a penny - it goes to the jar - but that's a superstitious thing, also - throwing away prosperity

).

Hubby and I started doing this and I never bothered to count it for a long time, because I figured it was change, how much could there be in that jar?? Well, I finally counted it - I think it was around four months along, and we had over 80 dollars in change. In 4 months!! At the time (well, still) 80 dollars was a TON of money to us. We're better off now, but we still feed the change jar - ya never know when you might need it.

It also came in handy for those times when the kids forgot to tell you they needed money for school or this or that - and called you after you had gone to work to let you know. I just told them to grab what they needed from the jar.

saving little amounts does add up.

eta - I agree about the "poor" in this country - can you imagine how much 80 dollars in change would mean to a person in Haiti or some other pitiful place?

meri