I'm a regular shift worker, not wealthy, not an employer — just someone who clocks in and out like millions of others. And I'm genuinely frustrated by what I see as a growing sense of entitlement in how people talk about social systems, fuel prices, or government support. Of course there are people in genuinely precarious situations, and of course a functioning safety net matters. I'm not arguing against that. But what I see more and more is people who treat state support not as a last resort or a temporary bridge, but as a baseline expectation — something owed to them regardless of their own effort or circumstances. The moment gas prices rise, everyone acts as if the government personally wronged them. The moment any benefit is discussed, people demand more without asking what's sustainable. This isn't solidarity — it's dependency dressed up as a right. A society that constantly expects cushioning from every hardship stops developing the resilience it needs. We should absolutely help those who truly need it, but we've lost the cultural instinct to take personal responsibility first and ask for help second. That shift has real consequences for how we fund, sustain, and justify these systems long-term.
Calling people 'ungrateful' or 'entitled' for expecting functioning public systems is a convenient way to avoid harder questions about whether those systems are actually delivering. When someone complains about rising fuel costs, they're often not being lazy — they're a commuter with no viable public transport alternative, watching their monthly budget shrink while wages stagnate. That's not entitlement, that's a legitimate grievance. The 'Vollkaskomentalität' framing tends to lump together very different groups: people gaming the system (a minority) and people who are genuinely struggling and using systems they've paid into their entire working lives. Decades of payroll contributions fund these systems — using them isn't freeloading, it's getting what you paid for. Beyond that, demanding better from a state is how democracies are supposed to work. Civic pressure is what drove the creation of the social systems we now have. Telling people to 'suck it up' and stop expecting support doesn't build resilience — it just normalizes inequality and lets policymakers off the hook. Personal responsibility matters, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Structural barriers, precarious employment, and cost-of-living pressures are real — and dismissing them as attitude problems is both unfair and politically convenient.