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Joe Hockey recently delivered a speech to the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, stating that this was the end of the age of entitlement (full transcript. I won’t go into a discourse about Mr Hockey’s credentials for making a statement like this because I believe, for a large part, that politicians say what their speech writers tell them to say.

BUT, his speech does generally agree with something that’s been bothering me a bit lately – it’s the fact that people seem to expect a certain amount of “stuff” to just come to them and that someone (governments, employers, retailers etc) had better provide it. Also, it seems that complaining about it to whoever will listen (mostly the media) is the way to get things to change, rather than actually doing something to fix the situation.

For example, recently Toyota laid off a number of staff at one of their local plants. From what I read, payouts are in the vicinity of 4 weeks pay for every year of service. Some folks were complaining that Toyota has been their only employer for ~20 years and they have little prospects of finding another job due to their skills. There were cries that the government should do something… fix it… this must be unlawful somehow! Hang on, whose fault is it that you didn’t look after your own education? Heck, that’s a HUGE payout that should fund whatever education you need to find another job. “But but but, how am I going to pay my (massive) home loan?”, the laid off workers cry!

On that topic, the whole banks and home loan interest rates is another one. Banks are businesses that need to make money, yet there seems to be an expectation that they should make money without actually charging for the service they provide. How’s that work? Somehow, people want competition between the banks, but when someone “steps out of line” by raising interest rates according to a different tune, that prospect suddenly doesn’t seem like so much fun. “Oh, but they’re an integral part of the society and should not be viewed as a traditional profit earning business. How else could I afford a house without the banks?”

Yes, how would you afford a house? Actually, I ask the question, why do you need to afford a house? It’s a very large financial commitment and not without a certain amount of risk. A bad decision has the potential to ruin you financially for a very long time. Yet there seems to be an expectation that everyone should eventually be able to own a home. Therefore, there’s this expectation that the government NEEDS to help the first home owner through handouts (which I will admit I previously received) and someohow force the banks to offer unprofitably low home loan interest rates. Let’s just ignore the fact that the price of typical “first home” dwellings basically increased in value overnight, by roughly the same amount as the handouts themselves. So who exactly is benefitting from these handouts?

The list kind of goes on and the more I think about it, there seems to be an unending cycle going on here, whereby one thing leads to another and a continuous cycle of expected entitlement never ends. Now I won’t pretend that I’ve never received any of these benefits, because I think you’d be a fool to not take opportunities as they’re presented to you, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect them all the continue indefinitely or to continually grow.

I suppose the big question is – which politician has the guts to actually do anything about it?