Prince$$: Living on the American Dime

I was transfixed by a TV show the other evening, entitled Prince$$, the goal of which is to confront a person who lives well beyond her means with the reality that a lifestyle demands a way to pay for it that does not involve leeching off one’s friends. The Prince$$ is a mid-thirties woman with literally no means of support who relies on her friends, as well as a now ex-boyfriend, to support a very lavish lifestyle to which she proudly claims she is entitled as she waits for her career as a famous singer to happen for her. An intervention was staged by people close to her, and a potential benefactor confronted the Prince$$ about her failure to realize just how close she is to total financial collapse and to living on the streets.

I have difficulty processing that there are people who live off the generosity of others and expect to do so as one of their God-given rights in their personal pursuit of happiness. When it was pointed out to Prince$$ that she needs to generate at least $2,500 a month in income by actually getting a job and going to work, she laughed because she doesn't work. It was also pointed out that her current lifestyle choices demand a monthly income of closer to $12,000 a month, a sum that the former boyfriend was partially paying out of pocket for her, including a current $900 cell phone bill, until he finally tired of being her ATM.

As an example of how totally out of touch with reality the Prince$$ is, after making sandwiches in a soup kitchen, then delivering them to the homeless living on the city streets, Prince$$, who failed to generate even a single dollar of actual income during the six weeks of taping, hailed a taxi to take her home!

The Prince$$ did audition for a job singing in a bar, but failed to show up for work because she didn’t want to take time away from her future singing career by working hours that could be spent in pretending she was already a successful singer. She arrived almost 2 hours late for a recording session arranged by the benefactor. The recording engineer told Prince$$ during the session she's just not that good, but the Prince$$ dissed his ability to recognize talent when he hears it. After being told by an agent that her voice is not professional quality, she became more determined than ever not to waste time even thinking about looking for a job, but to spend more time ... spending money she doesn't have for a career she also doesn't have.

After 6 weeks of being shown the future reality of literally living on the streets, the Prince$$ was shocked when her potential benefactor, who had offered a prize of $5,000 if the contestant came to understand that to pay for her lifestyle, she has to generate income, told her that because the benefactor had seen absolutely no behavioral changes whatsoever, there would be … nothing given to her in return. The Prince$$ screamed at the camera, "This is NOT the way this is supposed to end!"

There was no other way this episode could end: no free ride on the benefactor's dime and all the local homeless shelters are already filled beyond capacity.

A recent newspaper's very biased, unscientific poll asked readers to determine who is responsible for the downgrading of the US’s credit rating: Republicans, Democrats, or other. My choice: other, including each and every one of us. An individual’s early lifestyle often determines the financial decisions s/he makes as an adult, including rising above one's circumstances and achieving the American Dream or giving in to fate and living on the American Dime.

All too recently, the American economy bent and almost broke by picking up the mortgage defaults for all the people who wanted the million dollar mansion on a tract home budget! This kind of person’s thinking seldom goes beyond the “I want” stage because this individual does not hear the word no. If I am the type of person who believes in saving others from themselves, then I can be dragged into the morass with the Prince$$. The missing piece, however, is the individual’s impulsive emotional choices, rather than a decision-making process based on factual information. And one fact is that there are far too many government programs, such as Welfare, that allow people an income without requiring anything in return.

People have received entitlements since The Great Depression, entitlements that were meant to be a hand up, not a permanent hand-out. However, generations of families live on money provided by the government for food, subsidized housing, child care, and medical care. What these lifelong recipients often fail to realize is that the programs were meant to be short-term assistance funded by the taxes workers pay on their earned income. A person who does not pay taxes, but receives the benefit from those who do, drains the system dry. The system only works when entitlement programs help workers who temporarily need a short-term helping hand, not when people build a lifestyle based on public assistance.

When Congress repeatedly votes to extend benefits, it does so all the while knowing that there is no money to pay for those benefits in the long-term. Once a person receives the benefit, there is always a way to extend it far beyond the original intent of the program. There is no way to continue to pay for these programs without raising taxes, but no politician worth his voting record is going to just say NO to a potential voter who is living on the American Dime or ask a working supporter to pay more out of pocket for free entitlement programs!!

In order to receive Social Security, for instance, a person should have to pay into it, but Social Security has become a money pot for far too many other reasons than a retirement benefit for workers who paid into it for a minimum of 40 calendar quarters. Once an individual learns that s/he can receive free of charge what working people are required to pay for, it is not a big leap to accept the hand-out, rather than the offer of a temporary hand-up. Why leave the front porch when money can be earned by staying put?

It’s challenging for me to accept that politicians refuse to cut unnecessary spending from the country’s budget especially because they personally benefit from the bloated budgets. My free MediCare actually costs me $3649.90 annually, but my Congressional representatives pay nothing for their medical care. Let them pay a portion of their medical care, pay for their haircuts, purchase and drive their own cars, fill the gas tanks out of their salaries, and provide their own cell phones/usage plans – just as the rest of us have to do to stay within our personal budget constraints. Our leaders need to be the example they expect the rest of us to follow, rather than trying to blame [me] for wanting a Social Security benefit into which [I] have paid during a lifetime of working one, two, and even three jobs simultaneously.

If every American adult, working or not, donated $10 to pay off the debt, [as NetFlix said about their recent price increase, about the price of a Starbuck's latte], especially those who are receiving "free" government assistance, it would get the ball rolling in the right direction. Everyone needs to feel part of the problem if we ever expect to see a solution. As long as individuals feel entitled to free goods and services, there will continue to be free goods and services; if, however, anyone who receives an entitlement has to pay for it by donating time, labor, or services back to the community, we could turn this train wreck around. But, the ball has to roll downhill, not be pushed uphill on the workers' backs.

Verizon workers are striking because they refuse to give up even one cent of their salary or benefits: evidently, they’d rather see people lose their jobs than bend a bit themselves so others can continue to work. One of the most rabid of the union leaders averred, “We aren’t going backwards,” but to me, that’s the most backward of all our thinking.

Isn't that also the lesson we learned from our government leaders and Prince$$ this past month? No one is willing to budge from stuck on stupid.