STEVEN FRIEDMAN: Whinge, whinge, whinge … why the middle class needs to trim expectations
These insiders are in denial of the reality that problems created over decades don’t melt into thin air
One of this country’s most serious problems is people who expect far too much. They are not the poor, who are sometimes told they want too much, but the insiders — the middle class and above. One sign of the latest bout of national gloom is, as usual, emigration talk. The only change is that the “stop the country I want to get off” camp is now non-racial.
When we compare middle-class lives here to realities in the places many people are fleeing, this sounds faintly absurd. Yes, the economy is weak, but middle-class people here live far better than their peers in many other countries. Yes, there is corruption, but if people fled every country in which the corrupt are a problem, most of humanity would be in perpetual motion. Yes, there is crime, but middle-class people are at no greater risk than those in many other countries where there is no stampede for the exit...
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