Enough complaining already. Live your life and stop worrying about “they” “ them” or things

Over the years I have mentioned some of this before, but the perception of unfairness and complaining about what others have is getting worse in my view. Did I and others in my generation have everything easier because we were born in the 1940s?

True I wasn’t burdened with student loans, but on the other hand I never had the full college experience and most of my night school was paid by the GI Bill.  I was never burdened by credit card debt, because I was taught never to buy what you couldn’t pay for- the alternative was doing without.

I grew up in a modest income family, probably not reaching middle-class ($3,000 in 1950- $41,000 in 2026 money). In the early years I remember we didn’t have a car and my parents couldn’t afford a house until my father was in his 60s and then shared with my sister’s family. 

Unlike what I hear these days, there was no complaining, no talking of unfairness. There were a couple of overnight and one week long road trip, but never a real vacation, my father didn’t get paid for vacations until years later when I was an adult. 

Life was life and you accepted it and made the best of it and enjoyed it as simple as it was. I don’t recall whining about millionaires or thinking about them and what they had and we didn’t. We didn’t know anyone as rich as Rockefeller. There weren’t many billionaires in those days, J Paul Getty and H.L. Hunt were exceptions. 

I had no feelings of going without, but I admit I had thoughts of doing better. While I never received an allowance, I always had some change in a piggy bank or my pocket, enough for a ice cream cone at ten cents or in high school a slice of pizza for fifteen cents. 

As children we worked for every penny- and we saved from those pennies. We collected soda bottles for the deposit, shined shoes, raked leaves and shoveled snow plus the occasional Kool-Aid stand.  If you wanted something, you needed money, there was no-one to ask for it and that was understood and ok. My father worked six, sometimes seven days a week 8-8. He would come home for dinner and go back to work. If he didn’t sell a car, there was no pay. 

Our expectations were low, I guess that’s both good and bad. We didn’t know anyone who had much more than we did. I wondered, but never asked, why my aunts and uncles all had houses. 

I started paying FICA at age 14. I don’t recall complaining government was ripping me off, but I was happy decades later when I hit the taxable wage cap later in the year. And I’m happy now that I have received SS benefits equaling much more than I and my employers paid in FICA taxes. Far from viewing SS as a scam, I see it as adding to a comfortable retirement even though I paid into it for fifty-three years.

Perhaps it’s just my perception warped by social media, but today nobody seems satisfied, they envy the very successful and conclude they are entitled to a share, many see corporate America as the enemy and taking advantage of them. They seem entitled and feel opportunities are blocked. They believe they deserve higher pay, and just “more” somehow. Some see working more than eight hours a day as demeaning and a sign of economic failure. We saw it as opportunity. 

Recently a person told me I was too old to understand, my generation had it easy, things are harder today. Things are different for sure and so are the attitudes of people. Maybe different attitudes and expectations did make growing up in the 40s and 50s easier.