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Bad habits and bad debts do not just go away with the election

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One Opinion
November 4, 2008 | 1 comment

After more than two years of hearing the constant drumbeat of a presidential campaign, it’s difficult to focus on anything other than politics, so why try?

Things have changed significantly since this eternal presidential campaign first began so long ago.

Back then the Iraq war was the central issue in the campaign, and John McCain went out on a limb to say that he would rather lose the campaign than lose the war. But in fact, Iraq has been so successful that it has fallen off the radar, for the most part, as a campaign issue. The war is not the only thing off the radar for this campaign. Other key issues such as immigration have fallen below the radar as well.

However, firmly in the middle of the radar screen now is the economy, and it will not go away anytime soon. Unfortunately, and regardless of who wins the election, the economy is going to be around as an issue for a long time to come.

Americans, both as individuals and as a government collectively, have built up a series of bad debts they can never repay. As one headline in yesterday’s San Antonio Express-News said, Americans will escape their bad debts -- one way or another.

Not necessarily; that needs an explanation. Somewhere, somehow, someone will have to pay.

A significant part of the problem is that America has allowed the economy to run on credit, and that credit has gotten out of hand. The long and short of the solution, regardless of whatever the government chooses to do, is that Americans must learn to live without debt.

That doesn’t mean that we suddenly become a strictly pay-as-you-go society, but we must learn to be thrifty and save for what we want. The days of instant gratification are behind us.

Last year, 822,000 American families filed for bankruptcy, according to an article in Parade magazine. That reminds me of an ad that I hear frequently on the radio: Be free of debt. It goes something like this: Credit card companies don’t want you to know this, but they are willing to settle accounts. They figure that it’s better if they get something out of a bad debt than nothing at all.

The pitch is that if your credit card debts are $15,000 or more, you can settle for as little as 40 to 60 percent of your credit card bill. “If you are currently receiving collection letters and harassing phone calls from your creditors and you want it all to stop, we can help you. If you can no longer afford to make your minimum payments ….”

But, the clincher is the closing line of the commercial. “You must have at least $10,000 in credit card debts to qualify!” The message I hear is this: If you don’t have enough debts charged to your card, you have to go out and spend more in order to qualify!

That’s insane.

What is not insane, but a fact, is that the present political climate, on both sides, has taken advantage of people’s natural tendency toward greed and envy and turned it into anger, as more and more Americans have been conditioned to be victims dependent upon government to solve their problems.

The so-called rich, those in business, and CEOs have been demonized as having exploited the poor. People are promised “fairness” (as opposed to justice) and happiness if only the right people are given the power.

Enough of these dark passions can create a large enough constituency of voters dependent on the same politicians who will, in turn, be given even greater power. If this sounds an awful lot like socialism or even Marxism, that’s because this country has increasingly been moving in that direction for a while.

This idea of cradle-to-grave care and income redistribution has a powerful hold on people who have been conditioned to depend on outside sources, rather than their own inner strength, for successes in life.

As William Penn said, “Men must be governed by God, or they will be ruled by tyrants.”

Perhaps America is about to find out which it is.
 


Your Opinions and Comments
 
Dusty Duty  
Rome Italy (Vatican)  
November 4, 2008 6:35pm
 		  
Things may be tough right now. But remember, every flower that has ever bloomed had to go through a whole lot of dirt.
This too shall pass. Will it matter in a hundred years?
I ... Read More Read More
 

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