No, We’re Not Going To Lower Our Expectations
Leave it to The Washington Post to publish a column that finds both amusement in the supply chain crisis and an opportunity to scold Americans for being “spoiled” and “pampered.”
A two-fer!
All because we like our supermarket shelves stocked and our restaurant meals delivered, while still warm, to our tables.
Across the country, Americans’ expectations of speedy service and easy access to consumer products have been crushed like a Styrofoam container in a trash compactor.
Time for some new, more realistic expectations…
American consumers, their expectations pampered and catered to for decades, are not accustomed to inconvenience.
“For generations, American shoppers have been trained to be nightmares,” Amanda Mull wrote in August in the Atlantic, before the supply chain problem turned truly ugly. “The pandemic has shown just how desperately the consumer class clings to the feeling of being served.”
What a snotty, condescending take on the expectation of full shelves and prompt, courteous service. We’re nightmares? Because we work hard for our money and want to be able to buy goods and services promptly when we’re ready to spend?
We’re the problem? Not the supply chain or the nationwide worker shortages?
Sorry, Ms. Maynard, we won’t lower our expectations. Some of us plan to vote out the politicians who thought it was a terrific idea to pay people to be idle and then depleted the workforce even more by firing actual workers who are not vaxxed.
If we’re spoiled it’s because many of us work hard and expect others to do the same.
In fact, the Center for American Progress reckoned that Americans were among the hardest working people on earth. (This was before the federal government began paying people to sit home in 2020, of course.)
In the U.S., 85.8 percent of males and 66.5 percent of females work more than 40 hours per week, they reported.
Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours per year than British workers, and 499 more hours per year than French workers.
Using data by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average productivity per American has increased 400% .
So yes, industrious Americans expect everyone else to work as hard as they do, including those in the service industry.
Americans busted their hind ends before the government decided to shut down the country in 2020 and foolishly paid people to stay home.
Once those checks began to arrive, the incentive to work went away.
For some, anyway.
As a result it seems that a great number of Americans have decided they like life on the sofa.
That’s a problem. That’s not normal. And some of us refuse to accept it.
But blaming Americans for being “whiny” consumers is demeaning. When we buy things we provide work for other people and keep the economy humming. We have a right to expect something in return.
There were almost 2,000 comments following this slice of elitist Washington Post drivel and most of the commenters - America-Last types - were awash in schadenfreude, reveling in the shortages and expressing merriment that Americans were being taken down a notch.
Americans should live as they do in third-world countries, they seemed to say. The U.S. is too materialistic and demanding. Get used to the Spartan lifestyle, they snickered.
Here’s a slice of critical thinking from The Washington Post readers’ pool:
One of the things that make me squeal with delight like a well greased piglet, is the ammo shortage - especially the 5.56 and 7.62 crap used in tactical weapons.
Sigh.
There were a few voices of common sense, including this, from someone calling herself conservachick3919:
So, what if there was a shortage of toilet tissue, baby food, formula, diapers, or Pedialyte to hydrate your sick baby? You consider these 'trinkets'? My gawd, you leftists are a trip! If any conservative was the president during massive shortages, you would be screaming from the highest rooftop.
She’s right.
The Biden administration ignored the worsening supply chain crisis for months. In fact, Biden’s transportation secretary has been on paid paternity leave since August even as American ports became clogged with container ships.
Hey, he’s bottle feeding! No time to worry about nationwide shortages.
(Remind me, how much time do active duty members of the military get to stay home with their newborns?)
In an interview this week, Pete Buttigieg offered no solution, other than to advise us to start our Christmas shopping early. As if those ships are full of nothing but Barbies and Legos and not electrical machinery, antibiotics, microchips and other absolute necessities we buy from China.
Worse, Biden’s mouthpiece, Jen Psaki, actually joked about the ““The tragedy of the treadmill that’s delayed,” at a press conference this week.
Deeply unserious people are running the country. They’re joking, bottle feeding and giving incoherent speeches while the country struggles with shortages and runaway inflation.
Biden may not be taking the supply chain situation seriously, but ordinary people are. Chances are they’ll vote for a tsunami of change in the 2022 midterms.
Can’t wait.
