Terminalcoffee discussion
Rants / Debates (Serious)
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WTF is going on (and other general WTFs)?
message 151:
by
Sarah
(new)
Nov 04, 2010 11:51AM
The first one was taken at a tea party rally I believe, and was not reported as ironic. The owner of the site said the same thing, that it would likely be gone by the time that guy got old enough anyway.
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Ah yes, the Laffer Curve (Never in the history of theories or the history of naming has a theory been so aptly named). Don’t underestimate Arthur Laffer: he ensorcelled a generation of conservatives like a practiced snake charmer with his “supply side economics” theories. With him for an economics guru, what could possibly go wrong?
Misha wrote: "He could have a disability. There are some people under 65 with disabilities on Medicare, although they're a much smaller segment of the Medicare population."I can't believe I didn't consider that, since that's who I work with all day long.
I took my truck to my mechanic today and, while diagnosing the problem, he told me that things are now more difficult than ever under Obama's administration. I said that I thought things were supposed to be better for small business owners, and he told me that wasn't so. That made me think that someone should be going around and talking and listening to real people who own small businesses. Who's doing that? And who's talking and listening to doctors? Who's talking and listening to people who used to have good insurance at reasonable rates - those who've been responsible and worked for it? Who's talking and listening to those of us who bought houses at a reasonable price that we knew we could afford? Who's talking and listening to those of us who pay off our credit card balances each month? Who's talking and listening to those of us who have consistently used good sense and who now are paying for the recklessness of others?
Yes, there's some outrage here. We want credit for being responsible. Shouldn't those of us who've been responsible get a tax break? Something besides paying for others' mistakes? Shouldn't responsible behavior be rewarded, not punished?
I have to agree with one of the things that Ken said. Not everything is a matter of opinion, and not all opinions are equally valid. For example if RA tells me something about educational methodology its likely his opinion is based on knowledge about that field. So I give it extra credence. I agree with this. Um, except the part about giving me extra credence. This is a tough one, really and makes me feel like I'm on shaky ground in so many areas. For example, I admit that my biases will impact the way I perceive facts, and sooner or later whether or not you place value on facts will mostly likely connect to your perception of what's important and what's meaningful. For example, I teach my students to use research-based strategies to impact student learning. How is student learning measured in the research I'm citing as relevant? Standardized tests and formal experimental design. Some people (including those with more experience and education than me) would say that those strategies aren't as good as, say, Montisorri or Waldorf or even multiple intelligences because the construct of learning is too limited by the assessment tools the studies and authors used. So what do I do? I teach by exposing my biases as much as possible and leave the students to use the data to make up their own minds and be prepared to defend their strategies and results as professionals. In turn, I don't have a lot of confidence in my own abilities to discern nuances in, say, economics...but I do the best I can as a consumer of information and I filter my perceptions of facts through what I value and a myriad of other subjective judgments. I can't help it. Isn't that what everyone does?
I hear things in the political discourse all the time that simply are not true. So, opinions based on falsehoods, or on ignorance, opinons of people who don't know what the first amendment is or who Thomas Jefferson was well I don't think they are of equal value. If that makes me an elitist fuckit, I'm an elitist. But I don't think it does make me an elitist.
I agree with you here, too, and I trust what you're saying. The danger is twofold, I think, when this is in the wrong hands. 1) Again, going back to what I said earlier, sooner or later the judgment of whether or not specific facts are relevant, and how they're contextualized, is key.
2) This is easier to express in a narrative. I read a scolding, fussy blog post this morning from someone (not from Wisconsin) whining about how stupid everyone in our state was for voting Feingold out of office. When we vote we're not required to say why we voted. It's not an essay question. So while my gut reaction is to state that a lot of people are voting on incomplete information, either left or right, I hear people on both sides saying "you just don't understand the facts!" when the voters don't do what they want. Strangely, the voters are somehow much more intelligent when they agree with the perspective of the one who judges. I've read too many perspectives (and no one here is saying this, I should make clear)that seem to imply that unless you agree with me, you clearly are unintelligent or haven't done enough research on the facts. The final evaluation of whether or not someone has researched the facts is whether or not they agree with the one in the judgment position. And that's sneaky and manipulative. But how do we measure whether or not someone's done research? I don't know. I do agree with earlier points about intentionally misinforming the public on both sides. Our local newspaper ran a daily column during the election called the "truth-o-meter" or something like that, in which they rated campaign commercials from both sides, esp. attack ads. From my perusal there was misinformation coming from both sides, esp. in the governor's race.
No answers here. Long post. Sorry!
Ok, I thought of an analogy that might fit here. Tell me if I’m on the right track. I’m thrown when I hear people say things like “Christianity is an awful religion responsible for so much harm in the world” and then two seconds later say “The Islamic faith is misunderstood…it’s beautiful with a wonderful tradition.” Uh…even a cursory glance at history indicates that Christianity has done some good while Muslims haven’t exactly been huggy-touchy all the time. Those are facts people ignore. That pisses me off, and I dismiss the assertions (and I would dismiss the opposite, too, that Islam is awful and Christianity perfect) because they’re based on incomplete information and way too general. Does that make sense as analogous in this context?
All political advertising (in my opinion) is almost completely without redeeming value these days. It's all just crap. Manipulative crap aimed at those who are not inclined to look below the surface at candidates or issues. I hate it with a passion. I just hate it -- and will avoid allowing it to enter my consciousness at every opportunity.
I also don't miss an answering machine full of robocalls.
I call it quite often. Sometimes as loudly as possible. It doesn't help matters any. I wish journalists would call them on it more often.
Instead we're fed by the misinformation machines.
Scout, do you know what your mechanic's political predisposition has been toward Obama generally? Did he tell you HOW things have become worse, and causally connect it to any specific Obama policy? Does your mechanic know that Obama proposed and the Democratic congress passed against fierce Republican opposition small business legislation that provided eight business-oriented tax cuts, along with the Small Business Recovery Act and its extension, which provided credit to thousands upon thousands of small businesses desperately needing it? If his perception is that the economy is still struggling after the historical collapse two years ago I would call that an accurate perception. If he's connecting that state of affairs to anything Obama has done or has not done I would be quite skeptical.With regard to health reform I would suggest Obama and congressional Democrats indeed have listened to millions of hard-working Americans with no access to private or employer provided insurance, to doctors and economists decrying the exorbitant rise year after year of health care costs and premiums far, far far above the rate of inflation. I would suggest they have listened to the countless number of Americans who have paid their insurance premiums only to have their coverage rescinded when they became ill, whose insurance companies denied their cancer treatments, that they have listened to those who were refused policies because of preexisting conditions. I would suggest they have listened to the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan government entity that has concluded health reform will REDUCE health costs. I would suggest they have listened to the millions of Americans who complained that under six years of Republican control of the presidency and the legislative branch no action was initiated to address the spiraling costs of health care nor the increasing lack of accessibility and the continuing decline in health statistics in America compared to other nations. I would suggest the administration addressed an urgent matter to which Republicans had been demonstrably indifferent and about which they had done nothing.
I'm not sure why you assume so many of your fellow Americans damaged by the economic recession have been personally irresponsible or have personally failed in some way. It is true that historically economic failure is sometimes linked to moral failure in order to justify more unforgiving and harsh social policies, or to divert resources away from programs helpful to the poor and the working poor and in the direction of those who make the large political contributions and whose interests historically have been protected. That's certainly true in the case of defense contractors, given that 55% of America's budget goes to defense, an amount that dwarfs the combined spending of the next 45 nations on the list according to several sources.
The principal point is that in an economic disaster as monumental as the one the world has just experienced, millions are affected by larger economic forces over which they have no control whatsoever, and who have in fact made responsible choices. Rather than scapegoat the victims of this collapse, or let blame be diverted by those who do the bidding of those responsible for the collapse, I would suggest rightly placing the blame on the economic speculators and CEO's in finance and real estate whose greed-fueled recklessness just flushed trillions of dollars of wealth worldwide completely down the toilet, caused to vanish entirely. It strikes me as entirely unfair to blame those who lost jobs, and as result lost homes and lost medical coverage due to the irresponsible and indefensible behavior of the moneyed class.
You ask why responsible people shouldn't get a tax break. Are you aware that as part of the effort to stimulate the economy the Obama administration provided tax relief to 95% of Americans? This means that unless you are among that very top five percent your tax bill has been reduced. And this leads me to another point. Did you know that according to polling most Americans believe their taxes have gone up rather than down? Did you know that most Americans believe the TARP program (aka bank bailouts) have drained the American budget, though in fact almost all of those funds have been repaid, and the government stands to make a profit? And, that this bolstering of the financial sector, no matter how unworthy the individual recipients, prevented a total collapse of the financial system, the impact of which would have hit ordinary Americans the hardest? Do you not see it as a serious problem when a majority of Americans do not have an accurate understanding of such basic issues, and base judgments or decisions on faulty understanding? Is it not noteworthy that those dubious understandings are not entirely the fault of those who hold them, since there are those who have made a conspicuous and concerted effort to misinform them?
Misha wrote: "Sorry, Larry. I don't mean to come off as though I'm yelling at you. I'm just frustrated and cranky."Oh I didn't take it that way. I agree.
Murdoch seems to believe he has new ways.
Wow, Ken.I'm not familiar with my mechanic's political leanings. He did tell me that every time he has to order a part costing more than $600, he has to file a 1099. This is something new, and something he resents. I'm just reporting what he told me.
Regarding health care, I can tell you that my premiums and co-payments and deductibles have seen a big increase this year. I spent six years in college and 30 years in a stressful job, and I've paid my dues. I'm not alone here. Those of us who have worked hard and been responsible expect good health care at a reasonable price. Isn't that what capitalism is about? Those who work hardest and make the most of what they have are most rewarded?
The same principle applies to those of us who bought homes and cars we knew we could afford and paid them off. I bought a small house for $45,000 in 1990, with a 15-year loan. It's not big; it's not stylish;
but it's paid for. Yet there's help and sympathy for people who bought houses three times the size of mine, with no down payment, and knowing they couldn't afford them. Those people should be held responsible for the decisions they made. I do sympathize with those who have a mortgage for a house that was within their means at the time and then lost their jobs. They are, through no fault of their own, the victims of these economic times.
Then there's the credit card situation. I pay my balance each month. No interest. Yet there are programs that reduce credit card balances for those who have spent irresponsibly and have all the stuff to show for it.
My city and county taxes have risen this year. This is the price I, and other propery owners, pay for working hard, saving, owning property, and being fiscally responsible. We pay for the fire departments, schools, and services that benefit everyone.
Same for federal taxes. Those who work pay for services and infrastructure and support for those who can't or won't support themselves.
The middle class in America who have worked hard and sacrificed and used common sense and been responsible are sick of taking up the slack for those who haven't done the same. And we're tightening our belts and still living within our means, but it ain't easy, and things aren't looking up.
And if you're saying, Ken, that the solvent middle class should continue to take the fiscal brunt of this fiasco, then socialism is the name, and a depressed and resentful middle class (the backbone of this country) will be the result.
Mod
Can't go there with you, Lg. I believe in personal responsibility. If people take a no-money-down loan on a house they know they can't afford, it's a bad move any way you look at it. And if the economy falters, well, they knew from the beginning they couldn't afford the house. They made a bad decision, and they have to live with it. Really, if you were broke and knew you couldn't afford a house payment, and someone came up to you and said, "I'll give you a house with no down payment, and you can pay me back eventually, but I can't tell you what the mortgage rate will be," would you take them up on it?
Scout wrote: "Can't go there with you, Lg. I believe in personal responsibility. If people take a no-money-down loan on a house they know they can't afford, it's a bad move any way you look at it. And if the ..."Being broke and living in a car, this would be a HUGE step up.
There's enough blame to go around. The loans should not have been made, and would not have been made if the lenders were being honest with their investors. The rating companies were also complicit, giving high ratings to securities they didn't even understand.
Deregulation? Screw that. Get solid rules in place and make the players play by them.
What I’m saying scout is that the “solvent” middle class indeed has faced an increasing economic squeeze for several decades now, and in fact shouldn’t continue to face it, but that those responsible either for the policies or the behavior producing that squeeze are not, as you seem to believe, the always readily available scapegoat of poor folks, or some amorphous band of low-income dissolute. What you interpret or define as socialism, or what “socialism” has to do in any way with the economic pressure on all Americans other than the very wealthiest is a connection I am unable to follow. I have this overpowering sense that no matter what I say, and no matter how many things I attempt to explain, you’ll retain your feeling that the woes of America deservedly should be assigned to America’s ostensibly reprobate underclass. In fairness, the loudest, often angriest voices in the country over the last thirty years or so have been deflecting attention away from the actions and behavior of the influential interests with the power and the real influence to affect the direction of the country, and negatively so for most people, and onto this supposedly negligent and morally suspect underclass allegedly draining our resources. In actual budgetary terms it’s simply not possible.
A relatively tiny portion of America’s budget is allocated to actual means-tested programs, or programs designed to benefit the poor or the working poor. In fact, expenditures for that segment of our budget have decreased rather than increased over the last thirty years. More than fifty percent of our budgetary outlay is solely for defense. After that, the bulk of our spending is for middle class entitlements like Medicare, for the physical infrastructure of the county, including parks, highways and transportation among other things, and the regulatory bureaucracy attempting to keep the food and medicine and workplaces safe for everyone. Top bracket taxes were halved thirty years ago, and those rates have largely remained in effect, meaning a loss of revenue, since those with the most money to contribute pay a smaller percentage of their incomes than they did in the past. The tax burden has been shifted to the middle-class or those with less, and programs for the least fortunate sacrificed as the debt has grown larger. But your blame clearly is misdirected, and as LG sagely points out, it should be directed upward rather than downward.
But it’s fascinating that in the wake of massive and conspicuous irresponsibility in the last decade by a segment of our political class, by high-flying, risk-taking financiers, by mendacious real-estate speculators, by over-reaching, reckless banks, by massively acquisitive corporations using all manner of unsound practices, and by CEO’s sucking away breathtaking salaries and compensation from their own companies, you reserve the bulk of your wrath for those of modest means, and some victims of predatory lending practices, who while surely bearing their share of responsibility, could not have, and certainly did not bring the entire system crashing down.
I don’t believe there’s sympathy anywhere for anyone who bought gigantic homes with insufficient means, though those homes were lost years ago. There is sympathy for people who in good faith sought to fulfill the American dream of owning their own home, but were swamped by an economic downturn over which they had no control, or for those who trusted predatory banks and mortgage companies to assess their economic situation accurately, responsibly and with integrity, those who essentially conned them into impossible mortgages and passed along the risks to a chain of greedy and irresponsible folks, at the end of which line the sucker and all the rest of us would be holding the bag (or in this case the “bundled, complex financial instruments”). I won’t undertake a history of the deregulation of banking and finance that led to this debacle, but needless to say it wasn’t people on food stamps responsible for it.
If you’re blaming the Health Reform law for your rising premiums, and by extension the previously uninsured who eventually will have insurance, where were you placing the blame over the last decade for the rise in premiums that was skyrocketing above the inflation rate, or for higher and higher deductibles, or for less and less comprehensive coverage through employer-provided plans? The health reform law is intended to subdue those costs, to remove the high cost to everyone of the uninsured, though every scrap of reform, incomplete and inadequate as it may be, had be fought for in a bloody battle against health insurance companies and their defenders and protectors in congress, and against a tsunami of misinformation from the conservative media machine and their insurance company friends. I don’t really understand why you would reserve scorn for those attempting to reform and redress the egregious flaws and unfairness of this atrocious system after years of political neglect of the problem. Those benefitting most from this reform are not what you call the irresponsible but rather those who hold policies privately or through their employers, but who have been getting less and less benefit at more and more costs, while the insurance companies have reaped windfalls. Over half of bankruptcies in America are due to medical bills, and the bulk of those involve people with health insurance coverage whose expenses and treatments were not covered, whose policies were bogusly rescinded when they became ill or whose deductibles were so high they couldn’t meet them.
As for taxes, while you may pay a higher proportion of your income in income taxes than people of lesser means, or people without property, you do not support state and community services singlehandedly for them. State and local services, especially the most basic ones people of modest means tend to use most are substantially funded with state and local sales taxes paid by everyone, these taxes, as opposed to income taxes, taking a higher proportion of income from those of lesser means than from those with more. So, in terms of how much those services cost them compared to how much it costs people with higher income, those with lesser means arguably are subsidizing those with greater means.
And though it may seem complicated, one reason income taxes for the wealthy, and capital gains taxes and estate taxes have been able to decline for so long is because in the face of the debt created by this shortage of revenue the Treasury has been borrowing from the social security trust fund. The payroll taxes paid into that fund are a highly regressive tax, meaning a much larger portion of a person’s income is taken the less money they make. Furthermore, SS taxes are capped at a little over a hundred thousand dollars in annual income. So, in essence, the wealthiest Americans, whose incomes derive from capital and investment rather than from working for a paycheck enjoy those lower taxes at the expense of the stalwart working class and their regressive taxes.
And, speaking of the middle class, one reason it has assumed so much debt over the years is that those at the top are taking home more and more, and paying less and less to their employees even as the economy grows due to the productivity of everyone; a middle-class whose health care and energy costs have risen as the insurance and energy company profits have reached staggering, unprecedented levels; a middle-class that has watched its jobs increasingly shipped overseas by those same employers. How this redounds to the blame of the poor in some people’s mind, I cannot honestly fathom. You ascribe the lack of health insurance on the part of some Americans to their lack of hard work or responsibility. But have you taken into account it has become simply unaffordable for many Americans, in no small part because of rising prices and larger and larger profits for insurance companies and less and less relative pay from their employers?
So you’re absolutely right that responsibility and hard work should be rewarded, and recklessness and irresponsibility shouldn’t. But you’re wrong about those to whom the blame for irresponsibility and misbehavior should be assigned.
And yes, I’m going for a Guinness record for post length. But in my view, the enormity of your misconceptions demands it. Besides which, I enjoy chatting.
Mod
I believe in personal responsibility too. I just can't figure out why you believe in it for borrowers, but not for lenders and Wall Street banksters. It's much worse when lenders and banks forego a sense of responsibility on a massive institutional scale, isn't it? I'm only trying to figure out why you're angrier at the little people than you are at the big people. It's the big people, the institutions, that dragged the entire economy off a cliff.
Hee. Gives Ken a prize for the longer post I've ever seen in my life
I hope Ken wrote that out in word and saved it before cutting and pasting it into the little box because if GR would have blinked and he lost the post he would have rightfully wanted to punch his computer screen.
Oh, and this really worries me:Over half of bankruptcies in America are due to medical bills, and the bulk of those involve people with health insurance coverage whose expenses and treatments were not covered,
That could be any of us, you know?
Mod
RandomAnthony wrote: "Hee. Gives Ken a prize for the longer post I've ever seen in my life"I never tire of praise for length.
Piggybacking on Bun's astute comments about capitalism, there really isn’t much more to it than what she describes, simply labor going where it wants to go and for whatever price it can negotiate, and for capital to be privately held and directed. It surely is a perverted notion of capitalism, and not an accidental one by any means when some wish to equate it with a moral system. But assessing moral fitness on the basis of income or the ability to purchase is manifestly deranged, both as morality AND economics. Drug cartels are strong wealth producers, and in my opinion they have a fabulous product. But their ability to pay their bills and acquire abundant consumer goods, while good for the Mexican economy (or comprising most of it no doubt) still isn’t a moral recommendation.
It is true that recently, as crackpot libertarianism has overwhelmed conservative thought in America, capitalism has been propagandized as some sort of zero-sum game of Darwinian competition in which the morally elevated winners are rewarded with prosperity and the morally defective losers deservedly condemned to their miserable fate. Of course, here and elsewhere historically, this is entirely about resources and where they go. Anytime you hear a lot about the undeserving poor, somewhere behind the curtain is a wizard attempting to fend off tax responsibility for the well-to-do, or an attempt to scapegoat deficits or eocnomic problems on the backs of the morally inferior underclass.
When a single mom raising two kids who works 60 hours a week in a fast food restaurant, rides the bus, and can't afford health insurance is considered morally unfit, while a hedge fund manager or derivatives packager with a gold-plated health insurance plan is a moral icon, it's something other than a wonderful day in the neighborhood.
Well and then there are those mega churches (not all mega churches, just some) that tell people prosperity is a sign of God's favor for your moral behavior.Isn't that a Calvinist thing? I could be wrong about that. I don't know that's just a megachurch thing...or that all megachurches go that route.
RandomAnthony wrote: "Well and then there are those mega churches (not all mega churches, just some) that tell people prosperity is a sign of God's favor for your moral behavior.Isn't that a Calvinist thing? I could ..."
It's a Calvinist thing, but the megachurches have worked it like a stripper in a monastery.
Which ones? Is there a particular denomination?
Mod
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperi...
In the words of journalist Hanna Rosin, the prosperity gospel "is not a clearly defined denomination, but a strain of belief that runs through the Pentecostal Church and a surprising number of mainstream evangelical churches, with varying degrees of intensity.Hm. That's interesting. Not what I expect from Christianity, but interesting nonetheless. I have some pentecostal friends...I'd ask them but I don't see them often.
It's also a popular belief here in Utah. The more righteous you are the more you are rewarded with earthy success.If you are a devout mormon...
...and successful, your success is a reward for your piety.
...and not successful, you are being tested and are quite righteous. The hardest tests are given to those with the greatest spiritual strength.
If you are not mormon...
...and are successful, your success is of the adversary. You are to be shunned.
...and are not successful, it's because you have turned your back on god. You are to be shunned.
Oddly, these beliefs seem limited to a portion of the mormons in Utah. Those I've known outside the state did not think this way.
I knew there was something wrong with Australia. There aren't enough Mormons here shunning us to get our act together.
Ha ha how are you coping? The closes I've come to being shunned is from the Catholics and they don't take it seriously.
i'm a christian (though more of the luther variety i think) and the first time i heard of this prosperity gospel was in a political and social philosophy class. it's crazy.
Oh, give me a break. We're talking religion now? WTF is going on?
This is in response to an earlier question about why I'm angry at the little people. I'm not angry at the little people. I'm angry at the greedy people who knowingly borrowed money to buy houses they couldn't afford and who used credit cards to buy things they knew they couldn't afford. And now, voila, we who have lived within our means in small houses and without luxuries find ourselves bailing out those who have bigger houses and more things than we do. How fair is that? How pissed should we be?
The people I know who overdid it have now been foreclosed on, or have downsized just prior to that. They have also sold most of their toys and have f-ed up their future credit (esp. with tighter lending).Meanwhile, I'm still chugging along as usual. Whatever bailing out of those people happened it didn't seem to take away from me, or my ability to define my own life.
Misha wrote: "I'm confused about how we're supposed to have bailed out people who got caught up in the subprime lending trap."I was likewise baffled by the reference to “bailing out” greedy home buyers. As far as I’m aware, those who bit off more than they could chew lost their homes, and no taxpayer subsidy has bailed them out. It’s unfortunate that after so many years of the right’s bashing of government, some Americans seem deflected from the real practitioners of irresponsible greed in the private sector, and their political enablers, and blame all ills instead on the only entity large enough and powerful enough to counter those private perpetrators of rapacious greed and avarice: government. This thirty-year old rhetorical crusade against government has turned into a veritable rout for the robber barons.
BunWat wrote: "I gotta say that's one of the things that is getting to me the most about the whole partisan politics thing. I don't mind if people are going to bicker about interpretation of data. But these day..."As players determined to distort reality persistently do so, too many in media simply hold up a mirror to reflect the distortion rather than actively pursuing a correction of the distortion with the goal of clarifying genuine objective reality.
Though all the new methods of distributing “information” have played a role, one has to wonder if a line wasn’t crossed forever when large corporate entities swallowed up the broadcast networks and eventually cable too: Disney taking ABC, GE picking up NBC, Viacom getting CBS, and Time-Warner owning CNN. And print journalism has not been immune either, with large media conglomerates gobbling up all the major papers except the NYT. Ever since the news divisions of those major networks were forced to become profit centers rather than being inoculated from the business side as public service, prestige operations, the value of mainstream news has greatly diminished.
Less and less has there been a focus on the relentless pursuit and conveyance of fact and truth, in favor of the construction of what they're clearly convinced are broadly palatable narratives they believe sustain their economic model. Within that construction seems to be the source of the current preference for theatrical balance over hard, unafraid, unapologetic truth, resulting in a genuine disservice to the democratic objective of an informed citizenry. It’s a trend that it seems we watched gradually approach the point where it actually would become dangerous, and finally, recently, cross it completely.
It really is a shame that so many capable journalists are cut off at the knees, or perhaps the practice of their profession is so reduced, as their organizations, their managers and editors and producers operate in a virtual crouch. How much of this surrender in the major news organizations and among the larger names is inexcusable careerist opportunism plainly indifferent to all else, and how much is grudging, seething compliance at best varies from individual to individual I guess.
OK, my final attempt to express what Americans like me are feeling. This has nothing to do with political parties or religion.(I vote both ways, depending on who makes the most sense, and I don't belong to any religious denomination.) This has to do with being fiscally responsible on the personal level. I saved for five years to amass a 15% down payment for a house. This was not the most expensive house I could afford, but the one that met my needs and left me with considerable discretionary income. I did the math, made a down payment, and bought a house I knew I could afford.
In my opinion, the people who bought houses with no down payment, knowing that they could barely make the monthly payments, put themselves in an untenable situation, and they should be held personally responsible for the decisions they made. The collapse of the real estate market rests on their shoulders.
I realize that the system was screwed up, with little oversight to protect people from themselves. But is that the role of government?
There may not be bailouts for individual homeowners, but when their houses are foreclosed and the government has to bail out the banks, the taxpayers are on the hook, aren't they?
I'll tell you what I believe, and this applies to many, but surely not all, Americans. We have been greedy in many ways. How many square feet does a person really need? How expensive a vehicle does it take to get from place to place? How many things does a person really need?
I understand the disdain people in other countries have for us. We're arrogant and greedy and wasteful.
And whiney. WTF?
Mod
No. The government (the taxpayers) will end up making a profit from the bank bailouts. So far, the largest banks have paid back the bailout money with the government profiting about 10% on average. The profit on some of the paid back money is 20%. The remaining bailout money that hasn't been paid back, mostly from smaller community and regional banks, will be paid back and the overall rate of profit from the entire program is expected to be 5%.
If there’s one thing I’m becoming persuaded of Scout, it’s that someone you know made an egregious status leapfrog by buying one big ass motherfucking house. And you’re seriously pissed. But since they’re residing now in a boarding house you can probably let it go.Seriously, I’m sure most would applaud (whether it would affect their behavior is another matter) the value you place on moderation and responsibility. Still, no matter what you’re convinced of emotionally, however offensive it may be when individuals behave irresponsibly, Americans buying houses they were unable to pay for simply are not the principal perpetrators of the economic collapse, nor the driving force behind the financial system meltdown.
No one may be able, or even motivated to dampen your anger, but they can point out that factually it is misdirected. And no matter how much anger there is in any segment of the American population it is an anger destined to remain, unless and until it targets the responsible parties. Otherwise, it is simply an inchoate, emotional response to a bewildering political and economic environment. What it will take in terms of acquiring sufficient accurate information about, or developing a useful understanding of that environment (if that’s even possible), at this point I really have no idea. And frankly, at the moment I don’t have a lot of confidence.
But if you want the genuine culprits behind the economic collapse and the squeeze on the middle class, it’s de-regulators and a depleted, dysfunctional regulatory system; an out of control banking and financial sector, tax-pampered and GDP-swallowing plutocrats, a thirty-year political and governmental tide that favors the wealthy and corporate interests at the expense of the middle-class and those with even less than them. As for the government’s regulatory role, it is not to “protect people from themselves.” It is to limit the consequences to all the rest when people don’t protect themselves. And systemically, to discourage or prevent as much as possible actions taken by those with the potential to cause far-reaching harm through their irresponsibility or risky behavior.
Your beef with American acquisitiveness and arrogance sure as hell is valid. But being mad at people for wanting, or attempting to own more than they can really pay for is not a mantra you should expect any political movement to adopt in the near future. My advice, for your own safety is never to repeat such comments outside this message board, and in particular not in any close proximity to American conservatives, Republicans or Tea Bag aficionados, because you’re certain to be called a socialist, or even a communist, whether they know what those things actually are or not.
Your critique of American capitalism is certainly well taken. Unfortunately, seventy percent of our GDP is based on consumer spending, so the entire system is designed to make you want things all around the clock, and to sell them to you whether you can afford them or not. In fact, the only goal corporations and businesses have is to sell goods or services and to make a profit, unless they are in the business of creating advertising or selling time for advertisements during the course of which you are persuaded how wonderful these consumer items are, how perhaps delinquent it may be of you not to own them, perhaps even downright un-American. But those businesses and corporations have no other goal, and no other requirements. So that’s where government and other institutions step in on behalf of other values and other priorities; or at least, they should.
And btw, not all Americans who bought homes they would eventually lose, and in fact most Americans who did so, did not buy them as the result of status-seeking whim or greedy acquisitiveness, but out of the basic wish to own the roof that’s over their heads. That very natural desire was preyed upon by irresponsible lenders unconcerned about risk, because as LG points out, they were merely passing the risk along; and by dubious appraisers enabling lenders. IOW, the experts, the “responsible” parties all but certified to prospective buyers that they were mortgage-worthy.
My only thought of those who took out mortgages that probably were beyond their means, were being told by the financial institutions that they could. Near the end the were offering 120% mortgages meaning they were allowing you to take out a mortgage for more than the value of the home you were buying. A lot of younger people had never lived in a time that there wasn't prosperity. So although they need to be held responsible for their loans I truly think that a lot of them were basing decisions on what turned out to be bad information, and not enough experience.
Mod
"I started this book with a bias toward personal responsibility. In the course of my research, I changed my opinion.
I didn't realize the extent to which these loans were sold, they weren't bought. The mortgage companies [had a specific business model of pressuring borrowers] to take out dangerous option-ARMs instead of [more conservative loans]. They specifically trained their employees how to confront the consumer who said, "I want to take out a 30 year fixed loan." WaMu could turn around and sell the dangerous option-ARMs to Wall Street for a lot more profit than a 30 year fixed rate loan."
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88...
I caught that, too. Thanks for reporting here, LG.
Terminalcoffee
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