s'not funny

Sometimes I wish the world owed me something. Most of the time I loathe the people who operate that way though--you know the ones? The folks who give in to introspective selfishness and indulge themselves at every given opportunity because they've "earned it" when in reality, or at least from the outside, it doesn't really look like all that much has happened / been earned / is deserved at all.
Privilege. Its one of those things that raises my hackles. Partly because of the class-awareness/ classlessness of the American system , at least in the time I grew up in (the mid-to-late '80s preppie fascination with upper-class stylings; the late '80s-'90s grunge-itude and punk resurgence when the "wrong side of the tracks" was the right one). Partly, I guess, just because .
I think part of the problem we are finding ourselves in today, as a country (hello mortgage crisis, hello credit card debt and negative savings rate, hello corporate scavenging by CEOs CFOs and COOs) is because somewhere in the American Dream propaganda, and the life-will-be-better jargon is this idea that you've earned it--the bigger house (that you can't quite afford)--the flashy flat screen (no cash? put it on the credit card!) --the two cars and daily Starbucks coffee(car payment or savings account? car payment!) --the multi-million dollar bonus even though you have to cut 30,000 jobs to make a profit (this one really gets me--(class warfare!) "competitive benefits" my ass).
Yeah, we work pretty hard. But that doesn't automatically entitle anyone to anything, does it?
I guess it should entitle you to what you've earned: your paycheck. Decent benefits, a modicum of security that your job will be there next quarter or year or decade, or at least a heed-able warning that bad times are coming.
That is certainly not to say that the stereotype I've just drawn is all that wide reaching --I mean, its a caricature if its anything, obviously--but it is also a feeling I get, sometimes, talking to people. My friends from college believing in the Great White Dream (mr. shining armor coming to take their credit card debt and dead end jobs away) the few hospital administrators and insurance types I talk to with any sort of regularity (insurance ethics? now theres a joke), the other kids, like me, a few years out of college or graduate school trying to put things together and making a place for "whats in it for me?" (I work sixty hour weeks. The least I can give myself is a daily mocha latte. And a gym membership. And a monthly pedicure. And a night out with the guys. et cetera et cetera). Its like the whole world is on a treadmill these days: we're not going anywhere, but we're still afraid we might fall off.