It must have, because our response to inequality was what led to people being given loans they couldn't afford.
But what is the root cause behind the growing inequality in America?
That would make the obvious solution something that is too horrible to see.
What we need is someone to lead us along a new path, where we solve our inequality problems without having to revert to the oppression of the old ways.
4 comments:
The big question in my mind is not "What is the ideal solution?", but "Just how are we going to get to the ideal solution?"
I mean, exhorting people to not have sex until they get married is fine, but there has been quite a bit of that already, and it obviously isn't fully effective.
So what do you propose for the people who can't be persuaded by talking? Fines? Imprisonment? Stripping away all support benefits unless they either get married or give up their children for adoption? Legal sanction for shotgun marriages? Government takeover of Hollywood to force them to make only movies that support "Family Values" and show people who have sex outside of marriages coming to untimely and embarassing ends?
What is it you want to do about the problem? And how do you propose to get everyone to go along with it?
How about this: We've bankrupted ourselves trying to overcome what are behavioral choices. Everyone is free to do as they please, but we cannot pay for the consequences any more. Instead, what we can do, is educate you about the life choices that lead to personal success most of the time.
Government doesn't get involved at all. There is no coercion. Only a realization that in the end, you've got to live with the choices you make and some really are better than others.
Follow up: this is the strategy that was initially employed against smoking and with good effect. The government didn't come in and immediately impose massive taxes, it simply educated the populace about the dangers of smoking.
Tertiary thought: this is all kind of a moot point. As our fiscal explosions continue to go off, the social spending that attempts to ameliorate poor moral choices will be cut, either through actual cuts or through inflation. The point I keep making on this blog is that there are real-world payoffs to good moral choices and real-world punishments for bad ones. We've managed to avoid the punishments for a few decades and in doing so, we've encouraged people to choose poorly. All that is coming to an end whether we want it to or not.
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