The horrific wrangling, finger pointing and just plain denial that has been going on in Washington DC during recent weeks isn't really about raising the debt ceiling. Beyond the ever present politics, it's about spending future generations' financial heritage on today's entitlement benefits programs. I believe the underlying money crunch means that some modern "American Life" perks will almost certainly be gone with the wind during the next few years. The reality in my view is that you'll have to create your own benefit programs by learning to be self employed and taking control of your own destiny.

It was during and after World War II that our elected representatives including the White House began to create a fluffy pillow of entitlement programs. For decades, Americans have expected pensions, employer supported medical insurance and long term employment. After a few years, people began to view these earned privileges as non-negotiable rights. Politicians got elected by promising to provide these "social apps" and now a figurative lynch mob is forming against people who dare to articulate a harsh reality; we as a nation can't afford tax payer funding of many of the broad benefit swaths of this entitlement paradise.

I believe that if you want to have most of those desirable items on the "American Life" menu, you'd better begin thinking and acting like a person who is self employed, in other words, a business owner. Very few other people will take better care of you. So you can start now or wait until your choices are severely limited. The first principle is to reinvest in you. Workshops and courses to help evolve your skill set, an exercise and nourishing food regimen for healthy care and saving ten percent or more of what you earn. Its about good health and financial resources. Discipline is an important key since Washington doesn't seem to have enough of that even to go around Capitol Hill. Where do you find the time you ask? You can actually skip some of those NFL or NBA broadcasts and instead devote two hours per week to learning something about business or money management. Of course if one of those sports leagues is paying you a pension for the rest of your life, please do support their telecasts!

The good intentions of thousands of politicians, past and present were fine. But they were making promises using someone else's money. Our country has taken on about $14 Trillion in debt to fund the promises of a good life for all without regard to the laws of financial gravity. If you are thinking and acting like a self employed person, you know that the only balance sheet you can live with long term is one with a black bottom line. If you know how to achieve that, your future is assured in ways that politicians cannot guarantee. Even our Caribbean neighbor that island bastion of Soviet style communism, Cuba has been encouraging their freedom starved population to see self employment as an alternative to their form of socialism.

People of a certain age seem to be having a closer look at how to get more control over their destinies via starting or buying their own enterprises. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, people over the age of 35 made up 80 percent of the total entrepreneurship activity in 2009. That same year, the Kauffman Foundation conducted a survey of 549 startups operating in "high-growth" industries -- including aerospace, defense, health care, and, computer and electronics -- and found that people over 55 are nearly twice as likely to launch startups in these industries.

I live in California where the unemployment rate is hugging 12% which is about three points higher than the national average. As politicians chatter about job programs, there is scant mention of our diverse small business community that is taking up the slack in the wake of larger companies that have had enough of the once golden state. We have perhaps the most vigorous statewide community of small businesses in the country. A small business if defined by having less than 500 employees and the latest numbers available indicate that California has over 700,000 small businesses but just over 5,000 large enterprises! While South Dakota is often voted the best state to start a business because of tax structures, the "X" factor in small business development is more about entrepreneurial attitudes, desire and resourcefulness. That is what you need to build your own benefits program and to have the desired control over your financial life and future. You may not land on the front page of the newspaper's business section but you won't have to pay attention to the political wrestling matches that simply ignore the real life facts of how to promote a healthy economic climate.