The net result of all this is that having expected the impossible, Americans are now crabby and disillusioned with what they have. Rather than appreciating the distance they've come in the past 35 years, Americans focus on what is wrong. And, finding plenty that falls short of perfect, they have become disenchanted with government and its leaders. Samuelson argues that this crabbiness is a signal that the age of entitlement is ending. Responsibility means taking life's lumps without running to government for rescue.
Responsibility is tough and unpleasant.
Yet honest readers will probably not find this austerity threatening because Samuelson painstakingly builds his case and refrains from the usual, divisive rhetoric of most public policy books. In the end, this restrained tone and leisurely pace takes the sting out of what is, after all, a severe chastisement of American indulgence and petulance. But let's say Samuelson has correctly called a turn in American thinking and that the age of entitlement is drawing to a close. And let's say his vision of more reasonable expectations and greater personal exertion prevails. Samuelson is unremitting to the end.