Entitlement

A few years back, Lexus ran a commercial featuring it’s top of the line, luxury vehicle. The tag line on the ad – you’ve earned it. And that’s where entitlement rears its ugly head. If you are rich you should reward yourself for your industry, your dedication, your sacrifice and your success. You are entitled to this piece of luxury and extravagant indulgence because of who you are and what you’ve accomplished.

But it doesn’t end there because you are also entitled to your house in the suburbs, your dining out, your vacations and, generally, your lifestyle. And what have you done to warrant this entitlement? You’ve been born into a social stratum that predicts your success and nurtures it every step of the way, you’ve been blessed with an unusual talent or you are driven to achieve by a work ethic or mental disorder that causes you to dedicate your entire life to the pursuit of wealth. Or darn it, you just like to work 20 hours a day so you can show the world how doggedly determined you are.

The underlying message here is You Get What You Deserve. And that’s the problem. Because if rich people deserve what they have then, by simple logic, poor people deserve what they have (or don’t have, as the case may be). It’s the old parable of the talents thing where all the servants start out the same but the wily investor comes out as master’s pet and the other two get the sack. We all start out the same but some of us exploit our opportunities (use our talents) and others don’t. And we have only ourselves to blame if we wind up as also-rans in the Trifecta of life.

Whoa. There are a couple of problems with this gestalt that are worthy of examination. Firstly (to flog the horse racing analogy to death), we don’t come out of the gate even. The accident of birth which has you in a two thousand dollar crib and me in a barrio in Rio plays a significant role in our relative chances of success. The doting parents and nannies, the better schools, and environment of support make the gap unbridgeable by the first quarter pole. And that doesn’t even take into account the better nutrition or any of the myriad of incidentals that make up the environment of our respective stables.

Secondly, there’s luck. (Actually, the first problem is also a matter of chance since we don’t choose where we are born.) Sure we think we are in control of our destinies but, when you stop to think about it, the seminal and most important events in our lives are accidents. Unless you are a member of a society that arranges marriages, your choice of a spouse was an accident. Unless you have fallen into the family business, the career you find yourself in was likely not what you had intended and may not even have been a choice when you were at an age to decide such things. Being right or left handed, blond or brunette, tall or short, smart or stupid, personable or socially inept has more to do with chaos than it does with determinism. An extra Big Mac in the second trimester or an antibiotic or traumatic experience for your mother during the first can send you careening around the rail for the wire or trudging to the packing plant.

So, in the end, we are rewarding ourselves for being fortunate. It’s a little self-centered and unwarranted but not the major problem with entitlement. The real sin (for lack of a better word) in entitlement is that, rather than celebrating our own good fortune, we pillory the unlucky (I’ve always thought the term ‘less fortunate’ to be a joke) and hold them to account for their lack of achievement. Yes, society should encourage people to live productive lives but do we really give them the opportunity to do so? Or do we burden them with unattainable dreams and rub their faces in our scarcely deserved opulence? They are entitled to better.