We were sitting in class today. It's late enough in the semester that we've gotten back the "extra" money from our grants, scholarships, and stuff that allows us to eat, and pay transportation and living expenses. So, generally a pretty happy day for all, right?

Wrong. One of the people in the class came in with a sour look on his face. He was upset because he was "only" getting $700 cash back.

Now, normally, this would have meant a double jet of heavily agitated Dr. Pepper launching from my nostrils, but we're not supposed to have soda in class, so it was replaced with the standard Tex Avery style double take.

ONLY $700? Criminy! I've got six kids, and what I've got doesn't even APPROACH that! Add to that the reason he was upset, and my point begins to come into play.

This individual has a new $1200 laptop. The money he was hoping to get was earmarked for yet another laptop of equal or greater value. When we pointed this out, he reminded us that his new laptop wasn't completely paid for. I answered him pretty quickly that his payments could have been less if he would have chosen a cheaper laptop, but he had to have the dual core instead. This is the same individual, I must add, that insisted he didn't have enough money to pay for his certification exams, yet went out and bought a Wii before Christmas, when they were scarce and rather pricey.

And, without getting specific, I will say there are actually good reasons why this young man's family was receiving Social Security benefits.

But this family has a network several small businesses would envy, every single gaming system except for the PS3, and literally thousands of games, movies, and relatively hard to find Japanese anime collectibles. For a "poor" family, they're nowhere NEAR hard up.

And yet, the attitude this individual had when the checks came in was one of outrage over not having more.

And that, in a nutshell, is one of the primary problems with entitlements. Far too many of the people on entitlements don't see them as a safety net, but as an allowance the government has no right to revoke, and should, in fact, increase. No matter how much the government spends, those right above the line, or right below, will always complain because they're left out. Meanwhile spending spirals out of control.

Now let me be patently clear: I am not claiming some sort of self righteous position here. I've done it myself, frankly, and had to take a step back at one point and reexamine myself. When I managed the group homes and we finally didn't qualify for WIC, I was shocked, and outraged, because of the small loss of food that this meant for us. Despite the fact that I had more than ample income to purchase the food we needed.

The only way to cure our addiction to government entitlements is to get rid of them entirely, in my opinion. They're hurting more than helping, and in all honesty, people will survive without them. Even in the heights of our worst depression, we haven't seen mass starvations in this country, and I find it highly doubtful it will ever come to that.