EVERYONE HAS A HAND OUT.

The economy has sucked…for many of us since 2008. That’s given rise to a lot of things. Higher unemployment. Higher crime rates. More people taking welfare, food stamps and medicade…but, perhaps, more prevalent for me…as it is for many middle-income folks in this country…the f’d up economy has given rise to the hand out.

What’s a hand out?

Well, it certainly isn’t a handout…like a pamphlet, or something you give to a homeless person when you go for your hour a year of volunteer time at the mission.

A hand out…is, by definition…exactly what it sounds like. Greed corrupted us all throughout the first part of the 21st century…after we found out that the world wasn’t going to explode…or more importantly, our personel computers weren’t going to explode at the millennium. We got so used to getting what we wanted, we failed to even recognize that a time may come when we were not only not going to get exactly what we wanted…but that we might just have to settle for less…not be a greedy pig…for the sake of all of us, some of who, during the harder time, just may happen to be struggling.

So, instead of excepting diminishing returns in order to show a kind heart to all, we decided that we’d just stick our hand out…demand what we felt was owed to us (whether it was or not), It didn’t matter.

We wanted ours…and be damned all that tried to oppose our greedy little mitt sitting there waiting for cash.

Now, if it had simply been one person, one town, one city or even one state, it would have been manageable. But it didn’t stop there. Like any trendy saying or thing to do, having a hand out became a part of our culture.

The squeeze has been felt by nearly everyone I know.

(unfinished)