Originally posted by der schwarze RitterPMB? Interesting idea. But it wouldn't last very long.
I don't know why you presume that everyone is living better than me -- that's just bizarre. I guess if you're a poor college student and a member of the Palestinian Martyrs Brigade auxiliary, you must think that life is always going to be like it is today? The good news is it doesn't have to be. If you apply yourself, and don't get distracted with foolish causes, you can get a job, work hard, and one day live the good life too.
I am in PSA, MESA, and considering PLFP.
today's NYT, columnist David Brooks reacts to the same story with which I began this thread:
The Culture of Debt
By DAVID BROOKS
On the front page of Sunday’s Times, Gretchen Morgenson described Diane McLeod’s spiral into indebtedness, and now a debate has erupted over who is to blame.
Some people emphasize the predatory lenders who seduced her with too-good-to-be-true credit lines and incomprehensible mortgage offers. Here was a single mother made vulnerable by health problems and divorce. Working two jobs and stressed, she found herself barraged by credit card companies offering easy access to money. Mortgage lenders offered her credit on the basis of the supposedly rising value of her house. These lenders had little interest in whether she could pay off her loans. They made most of their money via initial lending fees and then sold off the loans to third parties.
In short, these predatory companies swooped down on a vulnerable woman, took what they could and left her careening toward bankruptcy.
Other people emphasize McLeod’s own responsibility. She is the one who took the credit card offers knowing that debt is a promise that has to be kept. After her divorce, she went on a shopping spree to make herself feel better. After surgery, she sat at home watching the home shopping channels, charging thousands more.
Free societies depend on individual choice and responsibility, those in this camp argue. People have to be held accountable for their indulgences or there is no justice. As McLeod herself admirably told Morgenson: “I regret not dealing with my emotions instead of just shopping.”
If you go to the online comment section affixed to Morgenson’s article, you see advocates of these two positions talking past one another, one side talking the morality of social protection and the other the morality of personal responsibility.
And yet if you look at McLeod’s case, and the entire financial crisis that it stands for, there is a third position. This is the position held in overlapping ways by liberal communitarians and conservative Burkeans.
This third position begins with the notion that people are driven by the desire to earn the respect of their fellows. Individuals don’t build their lives from scratch. They absorb the patterns and norms of the world around them.
Decision-making — whether it’s taking out a loan or deciding whom to marry — isn’t a coldly rational, self-conscious act. Instead, decision-making is a long chain of processes, most of which happen beneath the level of awareness. We absorb a way of perceiving the world from parents and neighbors. We mimic the behavior around us. Only at the end of the process is there self-conscious oversight.
According to this view, what happened to McLeod, and the nation’s financial system, is part of a larger social story. America once had a culture of thrift. But over the past decades, that unspoken code has been silently eroded.
Some of the toxins were economic. Rising house prices gave people the impression that they could take on more risk. Some were cultural. We entered a period of mass luxury, in which people down the income scale expect to own designer goods. Some were moral. Schools and other institutions used to talk the language of sin and temptation to alert people to the seductions that could ruin their lives. They no longer do.
Norms changed and people began making jokes to make illicit things seem normal. Instead of condemning hyper-consumerism, they made quips about “retail therapy,” or repeated the line that Morgenson noted in her article: When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.
McLeod and the lenders were not only shaped by deteriorating norms, they helped degrade them. Despite all the subterranean social influences, there still is that final stage of decision-making when individual choice matters. Each time an avid lender struck a deal with an avid borrower, it reinforced a new definition of acceptable behavior for neighbors, family and friends. In a community, behavior sets off ripples. Every decision is a public contribution or a destructive act.
And now the reckoning has come. The turn in the market punishes many of those seduced by financial temptations. (Sometimes capitalism undermines the Puritan virtues, but sometimes it reinforces them.)
Meanwhile, social institutions are trying to re-right the norms. The government is sending some messages. The Treasury and the Fed are trying to stabilize the system while still ensuring that those who made mistakes feel the pain.
But the important shifts will be private, as people and communities learn and adopt different social standards. After the Depression, a savings mentality set in. After the dot-com bubble, a bit of sobriety hit Silicon Valley. Now it’s the borrowers’ and lenders’ turn. As the saying goes: People don’t change when they see the light. They change when they feel the heat.
Originally posted by ScriabinCare to water it down for the impatient reader?
today's NYT, columnist David Brooks reacts to the same story with which I began this thread:
The Culture of Debt
By DAVID BROOKS
On the front page of Sunday’s Times, Gretchen Morgenson described Diane McLeod’s spiral into indebtedness, and now a debate has erupted over who is to blame.
Some people emphasize the predatory lenders who seduced her wi ...[text shortened]... saying goes: People don’t change when they see the light. They change when they feel the heat.
Originally posted by scherzowhat is it with people? can't they take the time to read anything?
Care to water it down for the impatient reader?
I guess the article in a recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly (I read a lot of essays and very little fiction) has a point: the internet is changing our brains and for the worse.
Either that or it simply appears to be making people read less and demand more sound bites, to jump around without reading deeply or thoroughly. Instead of changing folks, it merely is opening up an entire world of words and ideas to a population of people who pre-internet would never interact with a printed page or with a set of written ideas.
You fall in one of the two categories and I think it is the latter.
The answer is no, I do not care to provide executive summaries -- it isn't that much to read for an educated person.
If things like this are too much for you to absorb, perhaps you ought to cut back on your input. You don't seem able to become well informed enough to make your views of any significance to others.
Originally posted by ScriabinThank you.
what is it with people? can't they take the time to read anything?
I guess the article in a recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly (I read a lot of essays and very little fiction) has a point: the internet is changing our brains and for the worse.
Either that or it simply appears to be making people read less and demand more sound bites, to jump around ...[text shortened]... 't seem able to become well informed enough to make your views of any significance to others.
Originally posted by der schwarze RitterFewer kids = more money and time = more luxuries and capital. That's why.
In a related matter, my uncle and I go round and round about why fewer people are having children (except foreign nationals from Mexico and Latin America). I say it's because people are strapped paying higher and higher taxes to the government; he says it's because once couples get out of college, they buy a brand new BMW and a McMansion. I'm wil ught a lifestyle and didn't save a dime for a rainy day. Well, guess what? It's raining.
People with more money feel obligated to spend more on their kids. But if you've got nothing you can pop out some kids or not - you'll still have nothing. Unfortunately so do your kids.
Originally posted by ScriabinNot that it is any of my business but you are 60 years old and still in the stock market? That takes some real gonades, especially in this evironment. I hope it is only a small part of your savings.
When the stock market went down by 19% year to date recently, at that time I was only down 8% due to once more being careful and paying attention to risk.
As for the whole debt situation, I get the feeling that you blame lenders for it, however, I blame our educational system. We are taught everything in school from who was the first king of France to what the theory of relativity is, however, NOTHING is taught for the most part about handling money and investing money. Therefore, I don't see why we should be suprised at all this. Really the question should be asked, is this intentional or simply blind ineptitude? I kind of hope it is ineptitude because the alternative answer is just to upsetting to me.
Originally posted by whodeyEver had a course in economics? Weren't you required to take 2 semesters in high school or college? Why didn't you?
Not that it is any of my business but you are 60 years old and still in the stock market? That takes some real gonades, especially in this evironment. I hope it is only a small part of your savings.
As for the whole debt situation, I get the feeling that you blame lenders for it, however, I blame our educational system. We are taught everything in schoo ...[text shortened]... de? I kind of hope it is ineptitude because the alternative answer is just to upsetting to me.
GRANNY.
Originally posted by smw6869No it was not offered at my public school and no I did not get around to taking it in college. What can I say, I was young and stupid. It was NEVER a requirement. However, lets say that I did take one course in economics. Do you think it adequate training to handle and invest money for the rest of your life? Such course are rudementory overviews about business and money, therefore, I really do not see it as adequate training.
Ever had a course in economics? Weren't you required to take 2 semesters in high school or college? Why didn't you?
GRANNY.
If you ask me, money related courses should be REQUIRED to first help one balance a check book. Then they should progress by having a course specifically about dealing with DEBT!. Then perhaps another course specifically regarding investing and retirment etc etc.
Luckily, I had the forsight to educate myself in alot of these areas. Otherwise I would be in much worse shape than I am now.
Originally posted by ScriabinThat was a very insightful article, it sort of resonates with the arguments that led to succesful class actions against tobacco companies.
Individuals dont build their lives from scratch. We mimic the behavior around us. McLeod and the lenders were not only shaped by deteriorating norms, they helped degrade them. People dont change when they see the light. They change when they feel the heat.
We all are free to choose, but when the market is also allowed to be overrun by advertizing that cynically and skillfully targets the weaknesses within a society while regulators actively dismantle the checks and balances that would limit the extent of the frenzied feeding that accompanies the 'seduction' then it would seem that all of us (government, private enterprize, the consumer) we all need some form of intervention if we are to break this addiction.
Originally posted by kmax87'we' aren't all addicted kmax, you play too fast and loose with this 'we' word, too often.
That was a very insightful article, it sort of resonates with the arguments that led to succesful class actions against tobacco companies.
We all are free to choose, but when the market is also allowed to be overrun by advertizing that cynically and skillfully targets the weaknesses within a society while regulators actively dismantle the checks and balanc rprize, the consumer) we all need some form of intervention if we are to break this addiction.
The cost of smoking to the state has been blown out by the quasi-religious anti smoking alarmists. How does smoking compare to health problems caused by laziness, heavy drinking, unhealthy diets.
Yet again we see your negative view. People are at the mercy of advertising, they can't be trusted to make up their own mind.
The answer, as it always is, less guvamint not more. Let people opt out of socialised health care and they then take responsibility for their own bad choices.
Originally posted by Wajomaokay so with the exception of you and the other 20 people just like you, whats your solution to the 5 to 10 trillion dollar bailout required for the freddy fanny bailout.
'we' aren't all addicted kmax, you play too fast and loose with this 'we' word, too often.
I think the extent of this real problem indicates some form of underlying societal malaise that wont be fixed by just a stern chat and a pull yourself up by your bootstraps man type of advice. No plant or process is ever allowed to be at the mercy of the engine that produces its output.
Time to control the market. The half hearted attempts and the mealie mouthed subservience to laissez faire capitalist principles will yet lead to all of our undoing, if we let it.
Originally posted by ScriabinI read it and Brooks seems to take the liberal stance that, "The credit cards made me do it!" I disagree with his blaming someone else (in this case, "the culture of debt," ) for an individual's bad choices. If people would only turn off their TVs, quit reading magazines designed to make you feel inadequate, and quit spending their weekends at the shopping malls, they'd find they have a whole lot more free time and a whole lot less debt.
what is it with people? can't they take the time to read anything?
I guess the article in a recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly (I read a lot of essays and very little fiction) has a point: the internet is changing our brains and for the worse.
Either that or it simply appears to be making people read less and demand more sound bites, to jump around 't seem able to become well informed enough to make your views of any significance to others.
Originally posted by kmax87We should let Fannie and Freddy go under. The sooner this happens, the sooner the healing can start. Otherwise, we might as well throw off the pretense that America is a capitalist society any more and be resigned to slow economic growth, high unemployment and barriers to hiring and firing, just like Europe has.
okay so with the exception of you and the other 20 people just like you, whats your solution to the 5 to 10 trillion dollar bailout required for the freddy fanny bailout.
I think the extent of this real problem indicates some form of underlying societal malaise that wont be fixed by just a stern chat and a pull yourself up by your bootstraps man type of ad ...[text shortened]... vience to laissez faire capitalist principles will yet lead to all of our undoing, if we let it.
Originally posted by der schwarze RitterWhat you are describing is America, not Europe.
We should let Fannie and Freddy go under. The sooner this happens, the sooner the healing can start. Otherwise, we might as well throw off the pretense that America is a capitalist society any more and be resigned to slow economic growth, high unemployment and barriers to hiring and firing, just like Europe has.