Want Versus Need

Rand harped on the difference between want and need. She complained that the looters, the welfare statists, the dregs who could not produce, always claimed need when they wanted.

Want can only occur after need. The failure to meet a need leads to death. A newborn needs parental care. An adult needs water and nutrition. Need is the primal instinct to survive, but want is secondary. Once needs are satisfied, individuals want.

People disguise wants as needs. Welfare checks go to drug dealers. Food stamps indirectly pay for Cadillacs. Goodwill stores are frequented by retrohippies. Teachers claim poverty. Men rape and murder. Women file paternity suits. Government 'creates' jobs and 'gives' tax breaks. The list continues.

Recognizing the difference between wants and needs is humanity.

Most Americans do not need. They want. Some want universal health care, Bill Gates to fail, to eliminate poverty, to smoke crack, sex, to be fashionable. They do not need these things.

My father taught me to question everything that I wanted. "Do you really want that CD son? Twenty dollars is a lot of money." He is never dishonest and claims that a want is a need. When he wants, he thinks why he wants, then he decides. He properly treats wants as secondary. (Bruce Springsteen's "Cautious Man" describes my father well.)

Sometimes simple decisions takes days, but I appreciate my father's lesson.