Thoreau stated: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," and probably this is true because man does a poor job of sharing the wealth, opportunity, concern, and neighborly affections to those that surround them. America is a country that certainly offers the best of the best to those that can afford it, whereas for the common man they are often reduced to merely wishing or dreaming of things that in actuality they will never experience or achieve. You could say that that is the nature of the capitalistic beast, for better or for worst, understandable, and somewhat to be expected.
Most people are relatively resigned to way that things are, so perhaps their lives are not ones of desperation, but of simply, resignation. However, in fairness to the common man, he should be able to lead a life where he can enjoy and appreciate the fruits of his labor, just as those that have wealth beyond his imagination, are able to do so, whether they have labored for it fairly or not. The problem lies where there is a clear separation of the access to the pleasures in life, when it seems that the entitled and privileged segment of the population can do pretty much whatever that they want to do, whereas the other must, in a certain sick way, ask for permission to do so.
The government in recent years have taken away more and more of the freedoms of the common man, and replaced these freedoms with annoying regulations, which as bad as those are, are even worse for the fact that the government is never satiated, because they believe that what they are doing is for the natural betterment of mankind, so rather than seeing these regulations for what they really are; which is the placement of the government's boot onto the common man's neck, they see it as the government protecting the common man from decisions that they, the government, deem to be harmful or inconvenient.
The thing is for the rich man, these rules don't apply, because they have the money and resources so that these rules will never touch them. Therefore, if the government says that you can't smoke in public housing or in your apartment, the rich man applauds this because he owns his own property and therefore the rule isn't applicable, and besides he probably doesn't smoke. If the government says that a DUI is now .08, whereas back in the 1970s it was .15, that is fine for the elites of America, because they have alternate means of transportation, or prefer to get drunk in private, or live in an area where the police wouldn't dare to pull them over in the first place. If the privileged believe that drinking soda pop is bad for you, they are all for eliminating or taxing its usage, while they on the other hand suck down nearly as much sugar but in the form of a Starbucks Cinnamon Dolce Latte.
There isn't any reason why a man living in America shouldn't be entitled to a few pleasures, the problem is that the government is pushing more and more in the direction of taking away the very things that makes life tolerable to those that have little. While it might be okay to offer someone unsolicited advice, a man deserves to be able to have a smoke, drink, or whatever pleases him, for unlike the rich man who has myriad choices as to how to entertain himself, the common man has far fewer, anddeserves something better than a life of quiet desperation