The picture doesn't really serve any purpose, beside lending it's meme to my title and being really funny.
The point of my post is that I'm tired of people telling me that the government should not bail the banks out because "if I had a business, and it failed, would the government bail me out?" My question to them (which goes unasked, because clearly they are not up to a real discussion) is: does your business affect the lives of nearly every person in the world? Because if it did, they probably would.
Does that mean that I am in favor of a government bailout? No. But I say that in full acknowledgment that no bailout almost certainly would mean another economic depression. What? Did you hear that correctly? Am I in favor of a depression? Yes. I don't personally know too many people who lived through the first depression, but everyone I know who knows someone who did says things like "They just didn't waste stuff like we do." My dad was telling me that his neighbor Jack, who is like 80 or something, has firewood in his garage that is 25 years old! He just can't see throwing it away because it might be useful someday. Obviously that might seem a little extreme, but it's that mentality that we as a culture have completely abandoned. I think one of the biggest root causes of a lot of our problems as a society is our wastefulness. So, while it would be devastating to me personally, and incredibly hard, and all those bad things, I think in the end, we'd all be better off.
2 comments:
Sorry 'bout that too many typos for me to let go. Always see them after I push enter.
There was a lot of good character that shone out and was built by the hard hard times of the Great Depression.
My grandmother's home was marked by hobos as a place to come to for a small job and something to eat.
My grandmother had compassion, she knew what it was like to be turned out. Shortly after the depression my mother's family had to move off their farm and into town because her maternal grandparent's foreclosed on my grandfather.
Shortly after my mother died in 1994 I received a letter from the estate of Lois Kannengeiser, my mother's aunt, in it was a check that was my part in the inheritance of the North Dakota farm. Yes, you see my great grandparents foreclosed on my grandfather, his wife (their daughter) and their seven children, only to keep the property themselves and pass it on to their maiden daughter, who never used it as a home herself.
Lots of good character was built and bubbled to the top but a lot of poor character was exposed.
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