Principle #6 - I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.

“Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely to give him comfortable subsistence.” Thomas Jefferson

Over the last 50-100 years, we have taken on several some self-destructive mentatilities (see my blog if you need a refresher on the ones I’ve talked about so far; http://americanrefounder.blogspot.com/) but none quite as self-destructive as the belief that as long as you try, you should be rewarded. Large portions of the population have a sense of entitlement to success or certain tangible goods (owning a home, car, big screen tv, etc). A large part of the cause of the current economic situation, the bursting of the housing bubble, was caused by the over use of sub-prime mortgage lending. First the government forced and/or pressured banks to lend to people with bad or no credit because well…doesn’t everyone “deserve” a home? No! Everyone deserves the opportunity to pursue the dream of owning a home, that’s for certain. However, you can’t guarantee success for anything to everyone without paying a costly price another way. This time we paid for it with our economic health. Second, the banks who were forced into the awkward position of having to offer mortgages against all sound financial advice still had to make a profit some way. Unfortunately they also got greedy and used unsustainable interest rates on those sub-prime mortgages (see Principle #3 for that one…). The initial cause of the problem...the government took equal opportunity overboard by trying to guarantee home ownership to everyone who wants one. I’m sorry to break this to everyone, but life isn’t fair. We may all be created equal, but our choices in life define who we are and what we‘re able to do. Some of us CHOOSE to work hard and earn enough money do and buy the things we want. Other people CHOOSE to be lazy and/or CHOOSE a career that just doesn’t pay as well. Unless we want to become a nanny state where we depend on the government to give us everything, we have to either commit to working for what we desire or learn to be content with what we have. Otherwise, we won’t have the option for anything but the essentials in life, and, like any other country gone socialist, will end up fighting for those things in the end as well.