27th Feb 2009
Living within your means
I really like James Bow’s blog – his posts are always well researched and he takes a sensible approach to politics and municipal development that is worth reading. But his post today about Rick Santelli kinda tweaked a mini-rant for me.
I don’t know Rick Santelli from Adam, but he did go so far as to say that he doesn’t want to pay for ‘loser’s mortgages’. I surely agree with James tying that to that fact that the some of the richest people in the US have walked away from the handout table with oodles of cash in their pockets and no guilt about it, and that hypocricy is alive and well in the bailouts.
But. But… I understand the sentiment of not wanting to use tax dollars to bail out people who voluntarily put themselves in debt, who voluntarily bought a lifestyle beyond their means. Sure, the US government and US banks created a bad situation where it was possible to get a 0-down mortgage amortized over 40 years, but it’s up to each person to know whether or not that’s a good idea.
By taking only the government and the banks to task for this mess, it leaves the people who took those mortgages without complicity or culpability – which denies them the power that goes with responsibility and puts them outside of the locus of control in the situation. Every person has the choice to not take full “advantage” of more debt than they can handle–particularly if they are the ones who thought they absolutely needed the big house and the bigger screen tv, and hell, why not if the bank is gonna give them the money.
I am happy as heck for the single mother in Detroit who now owns her own home outright. That’s just a smart investment that SHE made.
But do I want to put my tax dollars toward saving Mr Big House’s ass? No. I do not.