From Can Do to Entitled

If you’re a regular reader of the Editor’s Corner (and I hope you are!), you probably remember a recent entry from Discourse’s Editor-in-Chief David Masci asking whether America can still build big things. (Spoiler alert: Yes, we can.) Well, in the spirit of Discourse, let me take David’s question a step further: Sure, we can still build big things, but will we?

The answer to this second question is a bit more unclear because it’s less about Americans’ capabilities and more about our collective choice of who we really are as a people today. And that choice is between two cultural courses: Will we have a solutions-oriented culture or an entitlement culture?

When I say “entitlement culture,” don’t think of Social Security, Medicare or other parts of the social safety net. Rather, I use “entitlement” to refer to a sense of expectation. Thanks in large part to the Americans who throughout our history did build big things, we are more fortunate than we’ve ever been. While the middle class has shrunk since 1971, more Americans have joined the upper class in the last 50 years than have fallen into the lower-income tier. The poverty rate, which stood at about 22% in the late 1950s, had fallen to 11.5% by 2022. Of course, many Americans still deal with economic struggles, but on the whole, our standard of living is quite high.

This prosperity is accompanied by a stereotype of Americans as a solutions-oriented people—with a can-do attitude, forward-looking outlook and a penchant for constantly innovating. As David wrote, we’re still capable of being that America. But, again, is that really who we are today? Is it even who we want to be?

There’s a dark side to America’s shiny coin: complacency. I’m sure you’ve heard it said that necessity is the mother of invention, but what happens when we already have what we need, at least for the present moment? Have we become something of a modern-day version of ancient Rome, resting and relying on old accomplishments and hoping only to keep what we already have? We do have a great standard of living—and frankly, when we don’t feel the need to fight for it, we begin to expect it, to feel entitled to it.

It may sound harsh, but invention doesn’t happen if we’re not hungry (figuratively speaking). Countless American innovations had humble beginnings. Throughout our history, many of the country’s most successful innovators and business people were born dirt poor. Even many of our more recent successes have unassuming origins. Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google and HP were all born in garages. The founder of Under Armour worked out of his grandmother’s basement; in the early days of her company, the founder of Spanx shipped orders from her apartment after working a full day as a door-to-door fax machine salesperson. These business leaders’ work was frequently less than glamorous and ran less than smoothly. But none of them expected success to simply come to them, nor did they feel entitled to it. They all put in the hard work to make it happen.

If anything, though, America is moving away from this idea that hard work and assiduous problem-solving are positive values. For one thing, our culture doesn’t celebrate entrepreneurs and business people and actually often denigrates them. Self-made millionaires and billionaires are lambasted for their wealth rather than celebrated for the jobs and prosperity they’ve often created for many people. We’re also increasingly becoming a country of consumers rather than creators—and this starts in childhood.

Take a look at the most popular toys over the last 100 years. In the 1920s, popular toys like Lincoln Logs, Erector sets and Tinkertoys encouraged kids to come up with their own ideas and literally build them. Today, with everything from robots to video game systems, kids are being invited into worlds already created for them rather than creating them themselves. Children don’t need to rely on their own imaginations like they did a century ago—and so creativity and problem-solving skills founder.

Instead, for young people, safety—both physical and intellectual—is paramount. This past week, Adrian College professor Nathan Goetting wrote on Discourse about one place where the concept of safety certainly dominates: the American college campus. Schools (and, as many argue, often parents) are focusing on creating safe spaces for children rather than challenging them—and that does us all a disservice.

When we become full-fledged adults, the conditions don’t get any better. Government—particularly too much of it—stifles the solutions-oriented mindset, as too much red tape can tie the hands of many potential innovators. Even when we may have the desire to create and build, overregulation can often dampen our initiative and make the decision to build big things, or even modest things, much riskier.

Look at entrepreneurship, one of the pursuits that most exemplifies problem-solving and hard work. While the United States has been traditionally thought of as very friendly to entrepreneurship, the picture’s actually quite murkier than you might realize. The percentage of U.S. businesses that are new fell by half between 1978 and 2019. While the COVID pandemic boosted entrepreneurship rates, as people moved away from traditional work arrangements, it remains to be seen if this will last (though given Americans’ persistent risk aversion and lack of economic confidence, the outlook doesn’t exactly look bright).

So let me go back to the question I posed earlier: Will we choose to embrace a culture that values innovation and finding solutions, or will we instead rest on our laurels and simply hope we can keep what we have? The answer is always only partly written. But as we move forward, we should take a hard look at ourselves and what we truly value as a people—and do so with the humility to understand that our good fortune is mostly the result of hard work and ingenuity rather than luck. We ought to see our future as an exciting challenge, rather than something to be safely endured.

Meanwhile…

What I’m listening to: When choosing what book to read or what TV show to watch, I’ll usually gravitate toward something that’s character-driven. After all, people—and all their foibles—are what make life interesting. The same goes for music: I love listening to music with well-drawn characters. It’s a particular challenge to offer insight into unique individuals in the span of a three- or four-minute song, but when it’s done well, wow!

One artist that excels at creating nuanced and often wickedly funny characters is late ’90s/early 2000s rock band Fountains of Wayne. Named after a now-defunct lawn ornament store in northern New Jersey, the band is best known for a super-hit about a mom who’s got it going on, but their catalog offers many detailed portraits of characters who will make you wistful or put a big smile on your face. For starters, check out the would-be couple that clearly won’t be in “Someone to Love,” the hapless guy pining for his long-lost high school crush-turned-movie star in “Hackensack” and the hungover office drone in “Bright Future in Sales.”

Band member Adam Schlesinger was one of the songwriters behind many of the group’s fantastic tunes; sadly, he passed away in April 2020 due to complications from COVID. While Fountains of Wayne may be no more, their music and their characters feel as fresh as the day they were written. Maybe it’s true that people never change…

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