The below was posted on X by Mike Netter who is running for State Senator in California.
This article was written by a 26 yr old college student by the name of Alyssa Ahlgren, who’s in grad school for her MBA. What a GREAT perspective.
My Generation Is Blind to the Prosperity Around Us! I’m sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis (Florida) trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of presidential candidates calling for policies to “fix” the so-called injustices of capitalism.
I put my phone down and continue to look around. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook’s, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we’ve become completely blind to it. Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose.These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don’t give them a second thought. We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty One Times!!!
Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful. ??
Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, “An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity.”
Never saw American prosperity! Let that sink in.
When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I’ve ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided. My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity.
I know this first hand, I went to college, let’s just say I didn’t have the popular opinion, but I digress. Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country. People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they’ve never seen prosperity, and as a result, we elect some politicians who are dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism. Why?
The answer is this,?? My generation has only seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn’t live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, the Korean War, The Vietnam War or we didn’t see the rise and fall of socialism and communism. We don’t know what it’s like to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones.
We don’t have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it’s spreading like a plague.”
The last two paragraphs sums the problem up pretty well and I would add avarice and envy. I grew up in a very old and modest two story farm house in the 50s with occasional frost on the north walls in winter, party lines on the phone and that’s if a phone could be afforded and electricity that went down routinely. We had nothing, just the necessities and not once did I ever hear anyone complain about being poor nor was there any envy over what another person had. You were never asked to do a chore; you were told to do it, or else. If you wanted something beyond what was provided, you were told to go earn it as opposed to just having it handed to you. I miss those times and the people that existed then.
The young lady who wrote the article has a good grasp on current times and if she hangs onto that grasp, she will succeed in life.
If justice is equal outcomes regardless of skill, abilities or even the desire to try then Captialism is unjust. But if justice is equal opportunity and personal responsibility, then Socialism is unjust.
So the question is what is justice? Looking at history it is obvious that justice is not found in governments forcing equal outcomes on citizens.