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“Personal Responsibility” Means Nothing Anymore
Today Walter Williams in his syndicated column reminded me (like I needed to be reminded) that people simply don’t care about personal responsibility anymore. He gives a number examples of how the culture has changed, and writes about companies that advertise the ways people can get out of their debt. They promote steps people can take to “quickly be debt free.” Essentially, because someone carelessly and thoughtlessly used a credit card to satisfy their materialistic needs, the companies are paying for it. Even Dave Ramsey, a financial expert and person of high moral values whom I greatly admire, encourages people to negotiate with companies to lower their debt, and for a fraction of what they owe.
Then we have the Federal Student Aid program, which provides a means for students to have their loans forgiven, canceled, or discharged. At first, when looking at the requirements, I thought that the criteria made sense; then I realized how any creative person could play with those guidelines:
- Your school falsely certified your eligibility to receive the loan based on your ability to benefit from its training, and you did not meet the ability-to-benefit student eligibility requirements (for example, you did not have a high school diploma or General Educational Development certificate).
- Your eligibility to receive a loan was falsely certified because you were a victim of identity theft.
- The school certified your eligibility, but because of a physical or mental condition, age, criminal record, or other reason, you would not meet state requirements for employment in the occupation in which you were being trained.
- The school signed your name on the application or promissory note without your authorization, or the school endorsed your loan check or signed your authorization for electronic funds transfer without your knowledge, unless the loan money was given to you or applied to charges that you owed to the school.
On second review, I realized that almost anyone who wants to qualify for this program could do so easily. For example, on bullet point three, how difficult would it be to incriminate the school? And why should a school be responsible for your poor decision in choosing a study major for a job that doesn’t exist? Or one that’s hard to find?
Then there is the Mortgage Forgiveness and Debt Relief Act, which was renewed for 2017, but as far as I can tell, is in limbo in Congress at this time. This law protected mortgage holders who were underwater when they lost their homes from having to pay unpaid income taxes on those homes, up to $2 million. I realize that some people lost their homes due to losing a job, but there are also many who insisted on buying homes which they could ill-afford. The reasons a person loses a home have no relevance to whether a person can take advantage of this program. A limit of $2 million protection for a tax bill is a pretty hefty forgiveness.
There are other ways that people have been able to cut back on or eliminate their debt. In almost every case, somebody else pays for those losses. People want to point to the “rich businesses” who can afford it, or to the government. Or they simply believe they are entitled to get help. Well, I have news for them. We are the ones paying their debts: the business customers and the American taxpayers.
But even that isn’t what bothers me the most. It’s the lack of personal responsibility. The other day as I was loading my groceries into my car, I saw a bag of green onions that had slipped out of sight and not been checked through. For a moment I thought about just throwing it in one of my grocery bags. But I didn’t. I plodded back into the store and paid the $.99. Did that make a difference to anyone—to another customer? To the store? I don’t know. But it made a difference to me.
Personal responsibility is part of my make-up. If I take on a task, I finish it. If I make a commitment, I fulfill it. If I incur a debt, I pay it. If it is hard to complete my responsibilities, I have no one to blame but myself, and I look to no one else to bail me out.
I think we have lost this precious and important value, this commitment to ourselves, our families, our communities, our country.
No one cares about personal responsibility anymore.
Published in Culture
Just to be clear I’m not even blaming this lawyer for doing it. It’s our system. Just don’t be confused about the productivity of the activity. It’s a joke.
My husband says the fastest way to university reform is make student loans dischargeable via bankruptcy.
I think one of the only ways to discharge federal student loans is to agree to teach for x years in any position they place you. Peace corps also qualifies you for federal loan forgiveness.
The Koch Brothers need to start community colleges centered on Jordan Peterson, Camille Paglia, Dennis Prager, and Austrian economics. Screw the accreditation. Then go be a welder or get an internship.
That’s completely impossible. The colleges are not for profit, therefore entirely altruistic. How can you impute conflict of interest to them?
I wish you’d write an economics post already. You seem to divert away from the common acceptance on economic theory here.
Honestly, there are few at this place that don’t comprehensively buy into it already, they just don’t know it, including you.
My point was simply that college is overpriced and outside of STEM, just makes people dumber.
I can’t take you anywhere, can I, leftcoast? (And using those big inflated words like altruistic to boot.)
I am honored.
Thanks. I’ll plan to read it later today.
@rufusrjones, I printed off the article you highlighted. I think I get it (although as important as economics is, I really dislike the topic–no offense). But you were concerned that we understand some of this. So here’s what I think I understand (mainly summarizing the essay). The word money is shorthand for capital, but capital is much more complex than just money. “It must be actively created and maintained through production, saving and sensible investment.” There are two kinds of goods: consumer goods which we directly use (such as food) and capital goods, which are used to produce the consumer goods, i.e., an oven (capital good) is used to produce bakery products (consumer goods). We produce more with a capital intensive structure than a less capital investment structure. And we have to keep growing the capital structure or eventually it will die.
Somewhere in all that getting off the gold standard caused big problems because our paper money wasn’t tied to any standard. This also de-stabilized interest rates.
If I’ve screwed up this part, help me. If I mostly have it right, are you suggesting we need to get rid of the Fed and get back on the gold standard? Do you see any possibility of that happening?
The important goal is stability of the value of the currency. So whether the currency is backed by gold or some other commodity has value insofar as it creates stability. During the late 19th to early 20th centuries the economy was expanding quicker than the supply of gold which caused deflation as we had tied the dollar to gold. That’s why there was a movement to use silver in addition to gold: deflation was causing farmers and other small borrowers to repay their loans in worthmore dollars (deflation).
Today the Fed controls inflation/deflation by manipulating the money supply relative to actual GDP. Real GDP is difficult to measure but still the Fed gets pretty close to its targets most of the time. They favor a slow inflation because they see it as better than deflation which from their viewpoint is correct.
I would prefer less inflation or stability but doubt whether that is achievable. But returning to a gold standard or any other commodity backed currency would not produce stability of currency valuation. Currency valuation is, and will always be, ultimately tied to the level of productivity of any group within a monetary system. Currency is a convenience used to symbolize goods and services and to facilitate trading of those things, nothing more. Stability or predictable low inflation promotes economic growth by enabling businessmen to more accurately forecast costs and ROI.
Buying gold is speculative investing and has the same risks as any speculation. If there is another big depression whatever currency is used will be just as tied to productivity as the current one is, there is no way around that. It is productivity that creates wealth (food, clothing, & so on) anywhere and anytime.
And that’s why Communism fails, it disincentives productivity as do all Statist schemes.
Ordered Liberty is, has been, and will always be the most productive way to organize societies and thus produces the highest living standards for the most people. Period.
They are inflating assets, including shelter, more than the CPI.
Statism requires both CPI and asset inflation but this is a huge problem now that robots, NAFTA, China etc. are on the scene. Bad behavior, speculation and poverty ensue. So people want Trump and Bernie. It’s very hard for conservatism to work or sell under these conditions.
The whole West should have switched to a harder monetary standard and fixed their entitlements the second the USSR fell.
It’s complicated, but we need a harder monetary standard and a more libertarian financial system or people will keep doing dumb things and government will grow. It’a harder for the honest and productive to get compensated like they should in the stupid system we have right now.
So people vote Democrat and live off of the government in one way or another to make up for it. It’s sort of stupid to be a productive Republican, really.
The simple way to think about it is, inflation shifts power to government and people that already have assets. Deflation accrues power to everyone and prevents the growth of government. You might have a slower economy, but it’s more fair and manageable.
US Price Changes January 1997 to December 2017. See any patterns?
I love this.
Be sure to vote.
Voting is a given, IMHO!
Great post again Susan!
Yes, we live in an age where personal responsibility has largely gone out the window, but it our Welfare State government that has wantonly and intentionally discouraged that decline in personal responsibility to promote it’s own power and wealth.
I agree that it is up to the individual to take responsibility for their own actions.
That said, as with the college loan crisis, and with the personal finance crisis where it is said that 78% of families are now living paycheck to paycheck, much of the blame rests squarely with our welfare state government.
First the college loan mess. College tuition has skyrocketed since the dawn of the government funded student loan, and that tuition has only been able to rise like it has due to the available tuition financing, provided by government. No one in government has even tried to rein in college costs, and as a result college has become all too often a hideous scam that has ruined many. There is a symbiotic relationship between our leftist college administrators and faculty and our welfare state. They both have promoted the value of a college degree and both have worked to raise it’s cost as well as granting tons of money and gratuitously paying our Progressive Academic elite and those tied to that elite far more than they are worth. It so far has been a win/win the Academic elite and a lose/lose for the American people. Families desperate to give their kids a leg up in life, have hocked themselves terribly and their kids to pay for a college education that more and more is not a good value at all. Colleges have become predators and America has become their prey.
Similarly, the omnipresent Regulatory State has tirelessly and needlessly raised regulatory standards almost everywhere on virtually everything which has greatly discouraged pay raises, job formation, new business formation and at the same time raised demonstrably the cost of living. The result has been a terrible financial squeeze on not only the lower and middle classes, but the upper middle class as well. People across the economic strata have fallen behind in their finances from trying to maintain but all too often failing to maintain their standards of living. The result has been tens of millions of families living beyond their means and as a result falling terribly into debt. Families have been faced with many bad choices, and sadly many of those choices have come back to bite them. Government bears the lion’s share of the blame.
When people are faced with a lot of bad choices, it is easy to blame the lack of personal responsibility for their choices, but maybe we should also be looking at the cause of all those bad choices.
I blame the system more, myself. Great post.
Great comment, @unsk. But I have a different view on a few things. First, on the comment just above, we are partly in agreement. But what if we worked to change the narrative. If we could convince people that their kids are lots better off without a college degree, and encouraged to find their training in other ways (including vocational schools and two-year colleges to start), the colleges would start paying attention. People would start to go elsewhere, and the market would drive the changes, don’t you think?
There are a couple of issues at play here. First, there is a huge effort to cut back regulations, and those results will shift down to the general population. I would also suggest that many people are used to using their credit cards for “extras” that they feel they need, but really want. I firmly believe that some people are in debt because they can’t make the distinction between need and want. There is so much prestige around owning a new house instead of renting, or owning a new car instead of making do. I think those issues are more cultural than governmental. So I think the difficulties lay at everyone’s doorsteps.
I forget all of the details, but renters really get screwed in this county. Kevin Williamson has written about this. It should not be that way. Part of it is “the system” has to force shelter price appreciation.
College is overpriced. Way overpriced. For what?
Susan : “I think those issues are more cultural than governmental. So I think the difficulties lay at everyone’s doorsteps.”
I do agree much of today’s overspending is cultural. I don’t know if you have kids, but boy howdy can they spend.
Susan: “First, there is a huge effort to cut back regulations, and those results will shift down to the general population”.
Yes, the Trump Administration has made an issue of this. However, I don’t think most people understand how difficult it is to roll back the literally millions of unnecessary regulations and to change the regulatory mindset of too many bureaucrats. Remember Trump has so far only dealt with Federal regulations and in reality not that many. I deal with government very often, and I have yet to see any change whatsoever. In fact, as a Californian, I think things have gotten much worse since Trump has been elected only because some of the latent changes Obama made are just now filtering through the system.
Unsk, if you’re in California, you have much bigger problems than Trump! ;-) Yes, there is no doubt that there is plenty of blame to go around. It’s just that there are so many things to work on from the government standpoint, I’d like people to feel empowered to make some wise decisions rather than wait and hope that the government will get its act in gear soon. If you have some ideas of things that can be enacted in the current environment, I’m all ears–or eyes.
Susan, I understand you point on irresponsible spending, but the fact of the matter is retail, restaurant and movie spending are all way down due to a decline in disposable income for the middle and lower classes. Disposable spending for the upper 1% is way up though). Allegedly 30% of all McDonald’s are under water. Many popular restaurant chains, particularly those you see in malls are in trouble.
Retail sales for the middle and lower class are taking it on the chin, despite all the happy talk. About half the malls serving that demographic are in trouble.
The following is a list from Moody’s of a wave of pending bankruptcies from 2017:
The Limited Stores $100-500M
Tanner Companies $10M-50M
The Wet Seal $50-100M
Marbles Holdings: $10-50M
Eastern Outfitters $100-500M
Michigan Sporting Goods $50-100M
BCBG Max Azria $500 M-1B
Vanity Shops $10 -50M
Ingress $100-500M
Radioshack $100-500M
Gender Mountain $500M-1B
Goldmans $100-500M
Payless Holdings $1B-10B
Agent Provocateur $10-50M
Pawn America $10-50M
Erdos at Home $$10-50M
B&B Bacharach $10-50M
Rue21 $1-10B
A-OK Superstore $10-50M
Gymboree $1-10B
Cornerstone Apparel $10-50M
True Religion $100-500M
Peekay $50-100M
Perfumia $100-500M
Vitamin World $10-50M
Aerogroup Int’l $100-500M
Toys R Us $1-10B
Styles for Less $10-50M
Fashion to Figure $10-50M
Sheikh Shoes $50-100M
That includes the scheduled closings of 2502 Apparel shops,1933 Home furnishing Shops, 735 footwear shops, 553 Department stores including about half of the Department Store building area, 415 miscellaneous retail shops , 240 bookstores, 165 Jewelry stores and 155 sporting goods stores.
First, if you haven’t already figured it out, economics is not my strong suit. That said, I did ask what solutions you have. Second, companies come and go; I have no idea if the list you offer far exceeds other times or not, or if it suggests a dire economic time ahead. Third, new companies are probably coming on line since supposedly funds are becoming more available than the last ten years.
If the lower and middle classes are being wiped out, what suggestions do you have?
Susan: “What suggestions do you have:?
Good question. I believe the economy is on the knife’s edge. Trump is doing some good things, but he and his administration may be overwhelmed by factors left over from the previous Administration.
First big problem: The Fed wants to remove money from the money supply and raise interest rates three more times this year, followed by several more times next year and the years beyond. There are good reasons to do that like the fact pension funds and insurance companies cannot operate in a near zero interest rate environment like we have been having the last 9 years. They need decent profits on their bonds or they will go under. We have also become somewhat of a “managed” economy with little investment as well. Capitalism needs Capital.
The Bernacke/Yellen Fed boxed itself in into a terrible situation. It pumped in more than 3.5 Trillion dollars in Quantitive easing to pay for Obama’s huge deficits, which has resulted in some very difficult side affects. The Bond, Stock and Real Estate markets have become addicted to very low interest rates inflating their value; once you increase interest rates those markets will severely decline or maybe even crash. Much of the Treasury debt over those years was short term at very low interest rates. Since the total debt has ballooned to over 21 Trillion, interest payments could skyrocket with higher interest rates, ballooning the deficit to dangerous levels.
Other Problems: The world economy is a mess and could collapse. As bad as we are, we are in much better shape than China, Japan and Europe. All of those also indulged in their own version of QE. China also has tremendous over capacity and a need to grow at a good clip to keep a lid on their restive populace. We are also running trade deficits ( sometimes huge) with all our major trading partners, which is why Trump is rattling his trade war sabres.
The only solution I can see would be a radical growth plan led by serious regulatory reform, banking reform and infrastructure stimulus to build more suburban housing and industry. Small business formation has collapsed. We are now losing significantly more small business than we are creating. Because upwards of two thirds of all new jobs over the last several decades have been created by small business, small business must be put in a situation to create significantly more new businesses.
If the Fed is going to raise interest rates, we will need a huge stimulus to counteract that coming recession/depression higher rates will cause.
Regulatory reform has to be that stimulus and it has to be systemic, not piecemeal. There is no way to change millions of regulations. The problem is that the courts under the “police power” have put in place an incentive to regulate unnecessarily with little recourse for those affected. A return to just compensation for takings, equal protection and property rights in a must.
—-> @unsk <—- Knows what he’s talking about. Excellent.
Western central banks got too interventionist in the 90s, and after that, so now we are choking on public and private debt, government, unfunded liabilities, misplaced and underdeveloped human capital, and social problems. It’s a wide open question if the Chinese kleptocracy can hold it together.
The Fed can’t guess the right interest rate, congress has no idea how to regulate finance, and government actuarial science is just theft and destruction.
This is why I think a lot of the complaining about Trump and the idealism about Reagan conservatism is sort of misplaced. No one in the GOP has the stuff in their head as it is being explained here and wants to lead on it.
This is why Trump and Bernie and socialism are attractive now.
Bush 41 should have fell on his sword to fix the unfunded liabilities and wipeout central bank discretion.
Ground zero for our problems is the financial system and the Fed, but no one really cares. The left as we know it would be wiped out if we actually did anything about it.
Listen to the interviews of Charles Hugh Smith at Financial Repression Authority (in order) and the interviews of David Stockman at Contra Krugman and The Tom Wood Show around September 2016. That’s what’s going on. The GOP has to get more libertarian, fast. They won’t.
Viva la socialism!
This is a very, very big deal.
Seriously, why won’t the Fed end up “paying” for everything?
This is the bottom line. People whine about Ronald Reagan, but he never really did much to to get us back to actual capitalism.