Extremely well-said! I am not quite that old, but I do remember even a few decades ago a much different society. No credit cards, but lay-away. And Christmas clubs - put away a dollar or two a week for fifty weeks, and have money for gifts, plus interest. And I rarely see local teens pumping gas, cutting lawns, or working fast-food counters. Seems we’ve had to import all these workers from far flung lands, where English is not spoken.
But attitudes changed. I’ll never forget one time in college, it slowed hard and the building manager at my dorm asked some students if they wanted to earn some money by shoveling snow. The little punks said “no, that’s why we went to college.” Jerks. I was very angry, even at the time, about it.
The character of men and nations are best revealed by adversity.
Perhaps we are destined to be tested again -I’m not sure we have prepared our children and grandchildren for a serious catastrophe.
Witness the ‘Occupy’ morons. Being limited to purchasing only one pair of shoes rather than five cannot be construed as any kind of sacrifice or crisis.
In the area in which I live those positions are populated by middle-age workers. My 19-year-old daughter is having a VERY hard time finding ANY kind of work - everyone seems to prefer hiring older workers with experience, even for what should be entry-level jobs.
I too remember people SAVING for big purchases. There is too much of an attitude of needing immediate gratification. It’s a HUGE problem in our society, IMHO.