As automation makes things less expensive, fewer people are needed to work. Ever fewer people are able to produce and distribute all goods and services.
A new social ethic is emerging among those who do not want to take their place among working people: “Some people have things we’d rather do than work. We have the right to do those things. And, we have the right to feel good about ourselves. Others do not have the right to call us “dumb” or “lazy”. We have the right not to be insulted. We have the right to be given what we need to supply our basic needs. We have the right to free housing, food, education, medical care, electricity, heat, TV, transportation, hot water, and air conditioning. All rights come from the basic human right: the right to feel good about ourselves.”
When many Americans are faced with that new ethic, they simply don’t know what to say. Working Americans have been taught that other people have rights. They have not been taught that they have rights.
The lack of response to the new social ethic has made it grow in popularity. More people than ever are finding that it pays to think of themselves as deserving, rather than merely dumb and lazy.
They have come to be proud to receive what they believe to be rightfully theirs.
