Some people just make bad decisions, but why should everyone else have to pay for their mistakes? In a sane world we shouldn’t, but this hasn’t been a sane world in quite some time. The precedent was set with the War on Poverty, which we have paid nearly $4 trillion to wage since the mid-1960s. Lot of good that’s done. Poverty, in large measure, is a choice. Don’t finish high school, have a kid while you’re a teen and unmarried. Get involved with drugs. Eschew an actual job. All of these are choices that will pretty much guarantee a life funded by others, meaning me and you.
Now we’re expected to pay for people’s dumb financial decisions as well as their life decisions. The News & Observer has for two days written sob stories about people who took out a second mortgage when they shouldn’t have and signed mortgage papers without reading the fine print. We’re supposed to believe that unscrupulous lenders hoodwinked these women into these mortgages, but we all know that mortgage companies are bound by law to pretty much spell out everything for you at closing. I just don’t buy their excuses, and now bleeding hearts are trying to get me to pay for their stupidity.
The mortgage companies and banks who made bad loans to people who likely would not be able to make the payments should likewise be hung out to dry. Sure, there was political pressure from the left for them to make politically correct loans so that even people who couldn’t afford the American Dream could have it. But people, and that includes banks, have to pay for their mistakes, otherwise there’s no learning. If we take up the slack then we are just enabling this behavior, and it will not change.
