The Tragic Death of FEELING SHAME (a politics forum rant)

Society has a serious problem with what I will refer as "entitlement culture." We see it in the media, on the Internet, and our everyday lives. The United States was built and has prospered on the idea that anybody, not just the privileged nobles at the top, can make it, as long as a person is willing to devote time and effort to work, develop their talents, and do the right things. I graduated from high school twenty years ago, and that was certainly something that was taught back then, so it was not that long ago. Today, it seems like all we see and hear is the complete opposite.

There is an attitude that has infiltrated the American psyche (and probably outside of America as well) that you should not have to work hard. That people that do all the wrong things deserve the same things as the people that do all the right things. That the people that do the right things are only able to do so because of privilege, so there is no point in trying to do the right things, as it would be futile to do so for somebody that is (supposedly) lacking "privilege."

This attitude has led to what I will call THE LACK OF SHAME. There used to be a point, it was within all of our lifetimes, that people felt shame for doing traditionally shameful things. Begging for money on a street corner was once seen as shameful. Falling behind on your rent and being evicted was once seen as shameful. Being chronically unemployed was once seen as shameful. It seems to me that the opposite is the case today.

This idea has been percolating in my head for a while, but it boiled over a couple of nights ago when I saw a certain GoFundMe. This person is a government employee and was asking for money to buy a house. I don't want to link to the page, as I don't want to dox anybody, but the basic points were:

(1) She is a government employee, which is a low paying job.
(2) She has massive amounts of credit card debt. Like close to $50K.
(3) She is single.
(4) She had cancer a few years ago, for which she started another GoFundMe back then. She says she is doing okay now on the page.
(5) She is in her 50s, and the only way that she will ever be able to retire is if she buys a house. She can't buy a house because of her low pay and because she is single. She wants to retire when she is 62, and needs your help to do it.

I was particularly offended when I saw this GoFundMe, as you can look up her situation on the Internet almost instantly. Her salary is publicly available, and is over $125K a year. She has a Patreon, which gets her another $1,500 a month. She has publicly posted about having her student loans forgiven, thanks to the public service loan forgiveness program. If this the kind of person that should be publicly begging for money?

I don't know if the act of begging for money by itself is a huge problem for society. We constantly are asked to donate money every single time we check out at any retail store, as if the company can't donate their own money to a charity. I have seen a rise in requests for tips for things that have never been tip-worthy before; I have been given prompts to tip at a self-checkout kiosk. The constant and pervasive begging for money is a symptom of something larger: people just do not feel shame anymore. We were once expected to work for what we had, and we were allowed to feel proud for earning what we had. Nowadays it is the complete opposite: it is totally alright for somebody, even upper middle class people, to beg for money. On the other hand, if somebody worked for their lot in life, it is just because of blind luck, so that person should be guilted into giving away their money.

My purpose in typing this out is to see if I am the only that that feels this way. I have a feeling that this will get a lot of pushback on this forum, which would be great. I would really like to be convinced that I am wrong and overreacting to something that is not quite as serious as the amount of time this has been on my head suggests.