Posted on 09/02/2011 10:32:22 AM PDT by Kaslin
Older people almost always seem to think they had it tougher than kids today do. So some older folks are striking back against the privileges enjoyed by todays young people. And this doesnt bode well for the future of society.
Consider a recent story out of Pennsylvania. The owner of a small restaurant outside Pittsburgh is banning children under the age of six, saying they regularly disrupted other customers meals, the Wall Street Journal reported recently. Ive decided someone in our society had to dig their heels in on this issue, the owner (a former teacher, luckily not of grammar) told reporters.
Well, its his restaurant, and if he wants to turn families away, thats his choice. And he doesnt seem to be facing a lot of pushback. The Journal reports that receipts at the restaurant are up, and notes: A poll on the website of a Pittsburgh TV news channel found 64 percent supported the under-six ban, compared with 26 percent who said it was a bad idea. About 10 percent said they didnt care. More than 10,000 people voted.
Meanwhile, CNN columnist LZ Granderson opines that this restaurant is on the right track. I don't know about you but I would gladly support an airline or restaurant that didn't make someone else's yelling, screaming, kicking offspring my problem, he writes. If you're the kind of parent who allows your 5-year-old to run rampant in public places like restaurants, I have what could be some rather disturbing news for you. I do not love your child. The rest of the country does not love your child either.
Maybe Im eating at the wrong restaurants. Ive had more flights and meals disrupted by unruly (drunk) adults than by uncontrolled children. Still, it seems obvious that many Americans have no patience for the idea that children will be children and are instead embracing the wisdom of the Middle Ages: children should be seen and not heard.
Ah, but they will be heard from eventually, and we may not enjoy hearing what theyll have to say. As journalist Michael Barone noted recently, Americans will soon depend on todays youngsters to pay for the countrys lavish retirement promises.
[U]nder Social Security, as with most public pension systems, current pensions are paid for by current workers. As lifespans increase and birth rates fall, the ratio of pensioners to active workers falls toward one-to-one, Barone warns.
Thats not enough to support the elderly in anything like the style to which they have been accustomed, unless tax rates are sharply increased. And sharply higher tax rates, as Western Europe has shown over the last three decades, reduce long-term economic growth. Thats the problem, often abbreviated as entitlements, facing our political system.
Still, many of todays political leaders oppose slowing the size and scope of federal entitlement spending. In May, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the Washington Post she would fight to ensure no benefits cuts in Medicare. It is a flag weve planted that we will protect and defend. We have a plan. Its called Medicare.
As for Social Security, Two decades from now, Im willing to take a look at it, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid told MSNBC in March. But Im not willing to take a look at it right now. Earlier in the year he declared that changes to the program were off the table.
Keep in mind that, because parents are having fewer children, each of those youngsters is on the hook for a steadily-growing share of the federal budget deficit. Our social insurance programs have slowly created a massive and immoral shift of wealth and obligation from today's middle class to future generations, Stuart Butler of The Heritage Foundation warned in 2007. Medicare alone now has a $32 trillion unfunded obligation -- a tab that is being passed to our children and grandchildren. Medicare and Social Security together now constitute an unsecured mortgage of $170,000 placed in the crib of every newborn American. The tab Butler cites has only increased in the last four years.
When the time comes to pay that mortgage off, however, some of todays youngsters might decide to change the laws instead. If, for instance, Congress were to adjust the formula by which Social Security cost-of-living increases were calculated or change the age of eligibility, future federal liabilities would shrink by trillions of dollars instantly, John Steele Gordon noted recently in the Wall Street Journal.
The lesson? We can either put our own fiscal house in order by reducing the amount were promising in entitlement benefits to future retirees. Or wed better be nice to todays children, since were counting on them to be nice to us when theyre running the country in the decades ahead.
No it’s not. It’s a practical observation that private property rights are not infinite and being restricted by law a business must still obey those laws to stay in business.
A bankrupt, closed business need not not worry about it’s rights.
“You can not compare being served on anothers property with being provided necessary services on your own property. There is no comparison.’
Yes, I can because the comparison was in the decision of a privately owned company not to provide service on specious grounds or just dislike of a certain person.
And no mind reading, thank you.
right.
What a joke. Usually the restaurants with obnoxious drunks are not the same restaurants that have screaming children running around. So, yes, he is eating in the wrong restaurants, and this is not an imaginary problem.
Also, disciplining your children and “being nice” to them are not mutually exclusive, and expecting children to behave with manners in public is not an idea from the “Middle Ages”. I’m only in my early 30s, and nearly everyone I grew up with knew that you behaved by one set of rules on the playground, and another when you went inside. Children can learn that quite easily, if parents bother to teach them.
“Banning children is simply illegal: a violation of federal law.”
Is it really? I know there age discrimination is banned in hiring, but I find it hard to believe what you are asserting. How could bars exclude people under 21 if that were true? How could concerts be 18 & over? Does not compute.
It wouldn’t be helpful to stop talking about or advocating about things that might be important just because somebody might then want to make a law about it. And avoiding talking about it won’t make the people who want to make a law for every situation back down and go home.
I agree. While parents need to discipline their kids, the best way would be to ask the parents to leave if the youngsters are unruly. The generation that gave us abortion on demand also made illegal immigration a necessity in that 50 million American kids are missing who would otherwise be the workers who supported the retired and aged. Demography is destiny, indeed.
There is nothing "conservative" about suing a business because you don't like their choice of policy. You have the choice of not patronizing the establishment. You have no "right" to enter it.
So you would support a law that forbids this policy?
By your logic age restrictions on the sale to or purchase by those under 18 of tobacco products or under 21 of alcohol are age discrimination.
You are making no sense whatsoever. The owner is making a legitimate business decision here that does not harm anyone's "rights." These type policies are nothing new and only making the news because some whiny liberal with an over reaching idea of his "rights" was offended by it. That you agree with that speaks volumes.
“This is exploiting a prejudice in order to make more money.”
That’s quite the obnoxious leap in logic. I would gladly spend my hard earned money at a restaurant which forbade uncontrolled brats and I don’t drink!
You can do it all you wish, that it is not a worthy argument is another issue, but obviously one you do not understand.
Just like business owners who have chosen to refuse service to legislators who voted to ban smoking in their establishments, I would encourage any business owner to refuse service to anyone willing to sue them because of a dislike of their legal business policy.
Find another restaurant if you don't like the policy.
I’m not saying stop talking about it, I’m just saying it is articles like this that do start the ball rolling for stupid over reaching laws/ordinances and comments such as those advocating suing this business for it that cause the problems.
The simple solution is to not patronize establishments that have policies with which you disagree and inform them why your are doing so.
What is “legal policy” and how do you know? And no, your opinions about what you would do IF you ran a business don’t count.
I agree with you. To be helpful, they should identify their excluded clientele, maybe with pictorial codes like a rat in a crossed-out circle for "No Democrat Congressmen." That way people wouldn't plan to go someplace, only to find they weren't welcome.
Dear Rich,
Bless your heart honey, but you just don't get it. The undisciplined brats that are running around being hellions now are not going to be the productive workers of the future. They are the convicts of the future. Or possibly the dead bodies.
Perhaps, I am going out on a limb here, but perhaps, people are reacting to the fact that "kids will be kids" now seems to mean that little Johnny or Susie can run up to a adult, kick them and the spawns progenitor will just smile vacantly and say, "kids will be kids!"
There are plenty of places where feral children may run free. Their warped little personalities will not be damaged by being denied the joys of dining in a swanky restaurant before they have reached the age of seven. Their progenitors have already twisted them so badly that untwisting them will prove next to impossible.
I do note that there are parts of the country where it is very rare to run into these hell-spawn. And in those parts of the country you don't find even the swanky restaurants having any kind of child restriction. That is because there people understand that taking to young child to a upscale restaurant is usually a bad idea. They also keep their children under control. Some go so far as to insist that their children use words like, "please", "thank you" and even address adults as "Ma'am" and "Sir"
I know that such a stifling of a child's creativity might seem strange but you know what Rich? Those children are the future workers and builders. Not the tiny terrorists that are so out of control that people are having to restrict them from places.
Best Regards,
HTB
Policies such have this have been in place all over the country for decades. There has never been an issue made of them. Until some whiners, such as yourself, decide to make an issue of it.
The road in front of your house is public, not private property and there are certain things you can not do upon it. Are you going to sue the government because you do not have the “right” to walk on it any way you decide is your right?
You are granted an invitation to enter the establishment, you do not own it and you have no “right” to be there other than what is granted by the owner. The rights of the property owner trump any rights you believe you have.
Say you decide to hold a yard sale this weekend, you’re opening your property to the public. I see it as I’m driving by and stop. I get out of the car with my dog to browse your wares. You don’t want the dog there. Whose rights trump here? Mine because you are open to the public, or yours because you own the property.
BTW - I have probably run more businesses than you have, including the one I run now.
You got that right!!!!
The issue of private property open to the public has been argued in state and federal courts for well over half a century or more or did you miss the Civil Rights issue?
And I am glad you've operated many businesses, but selling Avon products, newspapers and on E-Bay aren't really relevant to the discussion at hand.
And I am glad you've operated many businesses, but selling Avon products, newspapers and on E-Bay aren't really relevant to the discussion at hand.
Your snideness, not just here but throughout this thread, leaves me with no alternative but to determine you really have no leg to stand on here. When one resorts to insults one has obviously lost the argument.
Try suing me after you are asked to leave my establishment because you have broken the rules and see how far you get. One woman once had the audacity to bring a police officer into my building to have me arrested for smoking at my desk when I had already explained to her I did not have to put out the cigarette because it was a private business and not a government building. The officer asked me if I wished to press charges against her for trespassing.
Have a good evening.
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