We must learn to delay gratification

Regardless of what name you choose to describe our current economy, America is facing a wake-up call that will change the lives of many.

In the Great Depression, we as families didn’t have much in the way of possessions and luxury to part with, so the way of life we knew changed very little. If we didn’t have something, we simply went without.

It makes me shudder to think of the reaction our younger generation and their parents will have when this fact becomes apparent to them.

We have lived for decades in a world of: “I want it now, I want it bigger and better than the guy next door. If he has a home with four bedrooms and two baths, I want one with eight bedrooms and six baths.” You get the point.

Every day my wife and I see “Help Wanted” signs, but our government has made it easier to stay on the hand-out programs, so why take a job and start at the bottom, as was the American Way when I grew up? The immigrants aren’t coming into America to take our jobs, they are coming to do the jobs that our workers refuse to do.

America will rise again and be the nation that other nations look up to. But we must take a look at learning to live within our means.

There’s an old Southern saying: Life is like climbing a tree. When a man falls from the tree, the size of the knot on his head will depend on how high the limb was that he fell from.

Common sense has been absent for some time, from the highest office in America to the people loaning money to people committing themselves to a contract they could not possibly live up to.

So wake up, America, get down to earth and bring our dreams back into focus.

GEORGE W. HORTON

Arlington