Riots without responsibility - paying the price for the entitlement culture

[HAL9000]

I don't agree with much of that. Its not the programs of entitlement, but its the culture of violence. Here in the US and England as well, we have embraced a culture that is continuously bombarded with the mindset of responding to every situation with violence. How many threads do we read here where people will say that a person should die for just silly stuff. We will embrace the Sopranos and let our 13 year olds watch The Wire, then wonder why they are caught up in some violent situation.

It's a solid argument, there certainly are a huge amount of violent people around at the moment.

 

[CitizenKain]

I don't agree with much of that. Its not the programs of entitlement, but its the culture of violence. Here in the US and England as well, we have embraced a culture that is continuously bombarded with the mindset of responding to every situation with violence. How many threads do we read here where people will say that a person should die for just silly stuff. We will embrace the Sopranos and let our 13 year olds watch The Wire, then wonder why they are caught up in some violent situation.

That's what happens when you have countries that have been at war, or casually invading/bombing other countries for decades. You can't wave around a banner with one hand going "Join the military, war is awesome" while waving another saying "violence on TV is the cause of our countries moral decay."
Since that will never happen in either the US or Britian, guess we better learn to live with it.

 

[woolfe9999]

I don't agree with much of that. Its not the programs of entitlement, but its the culture of violence. Here in the US and England as well, we have embraced a culture that is continuously bombarded with the mindset of responding to every situation with violence. How many threads do we read here where people will say that a person should die for just silly stuff. We will embrace the Sopranos and let our 13 year olds watch The Wire, then wonder why they are caught up in some violent situation.

Is UK culture as enamored of violence as American culture? Is it as woven in to their popular culture as ours? I'm not so sure. It certainly isn't in continental Europe. I think what is happening in the UK is that a protest starts over a shooting, then young people, sensing things are unraveling in the the world, do what young people usually do when they sense things unravelling. They take the opportunity to loot, pillage and burn. And they do it for its own sake.

 

[HAL9000]

Is UK culture as enamored of violence as American culture? Is it as woven in to their popular culture as ours? I'm not so sure. It certainly isn't in continental Europe. I think what is happening in the UK is that a protest starts over a shooting, then young people, sensing things are unraveling in the the world, do what young people usually do when they sense things unravelling. They take the opportunity to loot, pillage and burn. And they do it for its own sake.

It certainly is among the "chav" culture, the people who are rioting, amongst the rest of us... no it isn't, this forum has definitely demonstrated to me that Americans (in general) are far more interested in violence than us English.

 

[woolfe9999]

It certainly is among the "chav" culture, the people who are rioting, amongst the rest of us... no it isn't, this forum has definitely demonstrated to me that Americans (in general) are far more interested in violence than us English.

Americans are more interested in violence than probably any other first world culture. We are full of contradictions. We punish violent crime far more severely than anywhere in Europe, yet we still have far more of it in spite of the deterrence. Our social safety nets are limited here - unemployment lasts for 6 months in normal economic times, yet we spend ourselves into debt while we're employed. In europe, you can get on unemployment for life, yet they save a much higher percentage of their paychecks. Social programs are supposed to encourage irresponsible behavior. Something is amiss.

We have deep seeded issues with our culture here that transcend (and more or less determine) whatever problems we have with government, politics and laws. Most people here cannot see it because it is too ingrained in our world view.

 

[HAL9000]

Americans are more interested in violence than probably any other first world culture. We are full of contradictions. We punish violent crime far more severely than anywhere in Europe, yet we still have far more of it in spite of the deterrence. Our social safety nets are limited here - unemployment lasts for 6 months in normal economic times, yet we spend ourselves into debt while we're employed. In europe, you can get on unemployment for life, yet they save a much higher percentage of their paychecks. Social programs are supposed to encourage irresponsible behavior. Something is amiss.

In the UK, they give you unemployment benefit, but after 6 months you are given training, and after a while they find somewhere to offer you a job, if you turn the job down they stop your money. It's a good system.

We have deep seeded issues with our culture here that transcend (and more or less determine) whatever problems we have with government, politics and laws. Most people here cannot see it because it is too ingrained in our world view.

Yeah, as an outsider it is interesting talking to you guys about America, the vast majority will just blindly defend things one minute (If I'm asking) then complain about them to another American.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

All this talk of immoral lifestyles, criminality, etc. is so similar to how Assad, Gaddafi, and others have addressed the protests that they are also confronting. The backdrop is similar though. It is due to high unemployment, disenfranchisement, inequality (economic, racial, etc.), and other social factors. Refusing to acknowledge the truth won't solve anything, but make things worse.

It's amazing how almost all of this stuff always boils down to economics. Perhaps the UK is paying the price for importing impoverished people into the country (exacerbating a Malthusian problem--not enough land and resources for everyone) and for having economic policies that create class stratification and that don't result in a good economy.

Knee-jerk claims that it's the result of "Entitlements" sound like good explanations to mind-numbed free market faithful, but in reality these situations are much more complicated.

Is it wrong to feel entitled to have a legitimate opportunity to be able to work one's way up to at least solid middle class status without excruciating difficulty?

Words like "personal responsibility" sound good, but "personal responsibility" alone won't make up for flawed economic policies, Malthusian problems, and class stratification.

 

[Carmen813]

Riots without responsibility
We've failed to teach our kids that an entitlement culture is wrong. Now we are paying the price



Now granted this is about the UK riots but it also applies well to the whole flash mob issue we have here to an extent.
Can the liberal entitlement mentality really be to blame? I don't fully think so but it certainly plays a big part.
Solutions? I'm always an advocate for more personal responsibility and it seems like things have gotten so out of control that parenting responsibilities have increasingly been shifted to the gov't. I say we stop inviting the gov't into our houses to raise our kids. It'll take a while but it certainly needs to happen to have any long term hope of correcting this issue. Immediate solutions though is not having MORE gov't - but just utilizing the gov't we already have to actually enforce the law so it discourages future lawless behavior.

You could easily make an argument that the conservative pushing the myth of meritocracy ("American Dream") and subsequent destruction of the middle class are what lead to riots. My guess is that the reasoning is something else entirely, likely cultural and not political.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

CanOfWorms just cant accept that these are just lazy, good for nothing youths who were given anything they wanted on a platter so they decided to do nothing with their lives. This is what happens when you remove the idea that you need to pay your own way.

What are people supposed to do when the jobs and opportunities needed to be able to "do something with their lives" are unavailable?

Keep in mind that the vast majority of small businesses fail, often miserably and ruinously, and that a sufficient amount of capital is needed in order to start a small business and that only a very very very tiny percentage of writers can emerge as the next Harry Potter-like author.

Ancalagon's post is pleasing rhetoric that satiates the free market dogmatists, but in reality it lacks substance.

 

[sarsipias1234]

Not one person has mentioned that these youth are extremely poor!

Not just too poor to not be able to afford a flat screen tv.

Too poor to afford proper health care.

Too poor to even have any hope of a prosperous future!

Look at what the world has left them: a huge wall of debt and no chance for prosperity.

What else do these youth have but violence to protest what has been done to them by the people in power?

We have dumped this massive debt on our children.

I can tell this forum is full of relatively rich people as they do not really understand the real situation on the street.

There are people making up to $30,000 a year who still would be considered poor as they cannot afford health insurance, dental insurance, or any luxury wants.

The last lawyer I hired was having massive financial problems. Her health insurance alone was $800.00 a month. If a lawyer in California is have financial problems then we are all in serious trouble as they usually have the most money.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Damn right...
Your gov. deny you a the right to have a job with a decent salary...

That s what happen when monetarist policy use unemployement
as the only mean to reduce an inflation that is caused by
the wealthy ability to control the markets....

LOL

This is not a right. Not anywhere in the world.

So, in your view it would be OK for a government or the upper classes to occupy 100% of the land (so that people can't farm and sustain themselves, which is pretty much the case in all first world nations today) and then enslave or starve the lower classes to death? In your view there isn't some sort of a human right to have a legitimate opportunity to be able to earn a living and to sustain one's self?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Europe , including the UK , use unemployement as the sole variable
to fight inflation , and as such , unemployement real rates are
roughly 10% , peaking at 20/30% rate for the younger people.

Expect quite a lot of people to develloppe a culture of the marginality
as some kind of rejection of the system they consider is discriminating them from the start.

But how does it discriminate against them? How are they prevented from finding work?

Economic policies that prevent economic growth discriminate against the lower classes who need the economic growth in order to have the opportunity to advance. If government policies make it more difficult for people to start businesses or to find work, it's a form of discrimination against the unemployed and the lower classes.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

We have deep seeded issues with our culture here that transcend (and more or less determine) whatever problems we have with government, politics and laws. Most people here cannot see it because it is too ingrained in our world view.

This. Basically, because of our fear of evil communism and socialism, and because of our believe in American Exceptionalism, Americans have grown up indoctrinated with free market dogma, so much so that they cannot question capitalist economic policies in the same way that someone who was raised as a devout Christian cannot contemplate questioning the existence of God.

The only way that Americans might ever do that would be a catastrophic economic collapse into third world nationhood, and even then they might not question their economic religion. I don't know if Americans will ever figure it out so that they can regain first world nation status, but I'm pretty certain that this nation is going to transform into a third world country. Thanks to the economic force of Global Labor Arbitrage and now increasing Malthusian forces, the USA is well on it's way to third world nationhood.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

The last lawyer I hired was having massive financial problems. Her health insurance alone was $800.00 a month. If a lawyer in California is have financial problems then we are all in serious trouble as they usually have the most money.

It's not surprising that a lawyer in the U.S. would have financial problems because contrary to what the general public believes (that all lawyers are rich), there is in reality a MASSIVE oversupply of lawyers in this country and JD overproduction has been going on since the 1970's. In fact we have about 1 JD (produced over the past 40 years) for every 215 people in this country, which is a huge amount. Only about 50% of all JD degree holders are able to work as lawyers (and many of those jobs are low-paying and of low-quality) and most new law school graduates have been unable to obtain lawyer jobs for years.

In the meantime the cost of law school tuition (which the colleges see as a profit-making opportunity or cash cow) has increased to stratospheric heights often requiring law students to take on $180,000 worth of student loan debt that cannot be eradicated in bankruptcy.

Thus, the legal profession (7 years of college education) is one more area where the opportunity for advancement to the middle and upper middle class has disappeared (and it's been like this for a couple decades now) for the most students in this country. Lawyering is one of the three traditional professions (others being physician and MBA), but it's now a dead field.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Deleted.

 

[HAL9000]

Not one person has mentioned that these youth are extremely poor!

Not just too poor to not be able to afford a flat screen tv.

Too poor to afford proper health care.

We have free healthcare, what are you talking about?

 

[William Gaatjes]

Deleted.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Time for sleep. I pressed the wrong thread.

Moderators. Could you please remove these post ? Ty

 

[0roo0roo]

their police are even more restrained than american police. if they had done what they had to, and cracked skulls on day one to end the air of lawlessness the cries of racism and police brutality would have drowned everything out.

 

[Abwx]

We have free healthcare, what are you talking about?

Free but the lowest quality among high income european countries..

 

[HAL9000]

Free but the lowest quality among high income european countries..

Source?

 

[sarsipias1234]

It's not surprising that a lawyer in the U.S. would have financial problems because contrary to what the general public believes (that all lawyers are rich), there is in reality a MASSIVE oversupply of lawyers in this country and JD overproduction has been going on since the 1970's. In fact we have about 1 JD (produced over the past 40 years) for every 215 people in this country, which is a huge amount. Only about 50% of all JD degree holders are able to work as lawyers (and many of those jobs are low-paying and of low-quality) and most new law school graduates have been unable to obtain lawyer jobs for years.

In the meantime the cost of law school tuition (which the colleges see as a profit-making opportunity or cash cow) has increased to stratospheric heights often requiring law students to take on $180,000 worth of student loan debt that cannot be eradicated in bankruptcy.

Thus, the legal profession (7 years of college education) is one more area where the opportunity for advancement to the middle and upper middle class has disappeared (and it's been like this for a couple decades now) for the most students in this country. Lawyering is one of the three traditional professions (others being physician and MBA), but it's now a dead field.

Thank you for such a great response to my post.

I have a friend that has $300,000 in school loans to become a psychiatrist.

His first pay rate was $9.00 an hour working 80 hours per week.

He will break even in about 20 years.

And even then he is not guaranteed a job.

 

[sarsipias1234]

We have free healthcare, what are you talking about?

I said these youth are too poor to afford PROPER health care.

If you think going to the emergency room is proper health care then you have not had to visit an emergency room.

I was a caregiver for my mom who did not have health insurance and she was treated very badly to the point of gross neglect. Better hope you don't wind up in the same situation as the hospitals and health system are bankrupt and corrupt.

 

[HAL9000]

I said these youth are too poor to afford PROPER health care.

If you think going to the emergency room is proper health care then you have not had to visit an emergency room.

I was a caregiver for my mom who did not have health insurance and she was treated very badly to the point of gross neglect. Better hope you don't wind up in the same situation as the hospitals and health system are bankrupt and corrupt.

In the UK healthcare is free, I'm not talking about the Emergency Room at all. (which in the UK we call casualty)

 

[sarsipias1234]

their police are even more restrained than american police. if they had done what they had to, and cracked skulls on day one to end the air of lawlessness the cries of racism and police brutality would have drowned everything out.

If the police did 'crack skulls' here in american that would just incite more violence I think.

These youth are not just rioting for what the want.

These youth are rioting for what they need.

You cannot stop humans from attempting to get what they need.