The next road to happiness.
Why does the “economic stimulus” discussion taking place right now sound like the same old story in another package? For thirty years, politicians told us that everyone deserved a house and did everything they could to make that happen. They pressured companies to make bad loans and, along with Wall Street, found ways to make those loans easier to swallow. So they encouraged us to spend our way in to massive amounts of debt because we were envious of what everyone else had and we were told we deserved it. We weren’t just entitled to the right to pursue happiness; we had the right to happiness itself. Now that the party is over, we’re being told that it isn’t fair that we’re suffering and the government will fix what ails us. We still deserve happiness and since the last plan didn’t work (spending like we individuals had the money) the government is going to spend money it doesn’t have to give everyone that happiness. Why do people in the government think they can legislate happiness? Why do they think they know what makes each individual happy? We’ll end up legislating ourselves into an existence where we live at the lowest common denominator in society and looking to the government to provide us everything. I’m not actually this pessimistic, but it’s difficult to not hypothesize around these possibilities. My goal for myself is to work to control what I can control, and not let my circumstances dictate my happiness. I can be joyful regardless of the situation I’m in and I’m determined to do just that.
