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@marty56 wrote:
@Logical wrote:
@MattH wrote:
My wife has long called credit card companies "credit pushers," but as with cocaine it takes two parties to do the deal -- the addict and the pusher.
True. It takes two to tango.
Yes but we are always leading and can always sit the dance out if we want. For some reason Billy Idol's Dancing with Myself comes to mind now,
LOL! Seriously, putting questions of personal responsibility aside there is a major public policy question here to which the answer is not exactly obvious: is the country as a whole better off with a government that mostly allows people to experience the consequences of their decisions (good or bad) with minimal regulation, or is the country as a whole better off with a government that makes more attempts to protect people from themselves and from those who seek to exploit them. On the available evidence (and as a scientist I strongly believe in looking to empirical evidence whenever and wherever available) from comparing different rich countries, it appears less regulation overall equates to somewhat more economic growth but also to, more inequality of outcomes within the population and more variability from year to year of individual circumstances. No large economy seems able to deliver both high growth and low risk. At times when there has just been a major disaster there tends to be a push for more regulation, then as memories of that disaster recede the cost of regulation becomes more of a concern and regulations get loosened again: this has been the pattern in the US for over a century.
@MattH wrote:LOL! Seriously, putting questions of personal responsibility aside there is a major public policy question here to which the answer is not exactly obvious: is the country as a whole better off with a government that mostly allows people to experience the consequences of their decisions (good or bad) with minimal regulation, or is the country as a whole better off with a government that makes more attempts to protect people from themselves and from those who seek to exploit them. On the available evidence (and as a scientist I strongly believe in looking to empirical evidence whenever and wherever available) from comparing different rich countries, it appears less regulation overall equates to somewhat more economic growth but also to, more inequality of outcomes within the population and more variability from year to year of individual circumstances. No large economy seems able to deliver both high growth and low risk. At times when there has just been a major disaster there tends to be a push for more regulation, then as memories of that disaster recede the cost of regulation becomes more of a concern and regulations get loosened again: this has been the pattern in the US for over a century.
MattH, you cannot ask that question about public policy while leaving aside questions of personal responsibility. That's the entire issue.
Should an adult American be allowed to make his own choices in his life and deal with the results, or should the government make every decision to protect him from possible failure?
I believe strongly that if a citizen's right to fail is taken away, so is his right to succeed. This country's greatness has always been not just its pioneering spirit, but its diversity. That's hard to achieve when everyone is exactly the same...no failures, no successes, nothing to strive for, because it's all plain vanilla, by law.
Our Founding Fathers risked being hanged to promulgate the idea that a citizenry should have the freedom to live life without undue interference from the government. Nobody ever guaranteed any results, for good or bad...just the freedom to choose one's own path. I think they'd be appalled at the very thought of government interfering in the personal financial choices of responsible adults, regardless of the end results of those choices.
Then again, I may just be stuck in the 70's .... as in 1776.
@Uborrow-Upay wrote:
@MattH wrote:LOL! Seriously, putting questions of personal responsibility aside there is a major public policy question here to which the answer is not exactly obvious: is the country as a whole better off with a government that mostly allows people to experience the consequences of their decisions (good or bad) with minimal regulation, or is the country as a whole better off with a government that makes more attempts to protect people from themselves and from those who seek to exploit them. On the available evidence (and as a scientist I strongly believe in looking to empirical evidence whenever and wherever available) from comparing different rich countries, it appears less regulation overall equates to somewhat more economic growth but also to, more inequality of outcomes within the population and more variability from year to year of individual circumstances. No large economy seems able to deliver both high growth and low risk. At times when there has just been a major disaster there tends to be a push for more regulation, then as memories of that disaster recede the cost of regulation becomes more of a concern and regulations get loosened again: this has been the pattern in the US for over a century.
MattH, you cannot ask that question about public policy while leaving aside questions of personal responsibility. That's the entire issue.
Should an adult American be allowed to make his own choices in his life and deal with the results, or should the government make every decision to protect him from possible failure?
I believe strongly that if a citizen's right to fail is taken away, so is his right to succeed. This country's greatness has always been not just its pioneering spirit, but its diversity. That's hard to achieve when everyone is exactly the same...no failures, no successes, nothing to strive for, because it's all plain vanilla, by law.
Our Founding Fathers risked being hanged to promulgate the idea that a citizenry should have the freedom to live life without undue interference from the government. Nobody ever guaranteed any results, for good or bad...just the freedom to choose one's own path. I think they'd be appalled at the very thought of government interfering in the personal financial choices of responsible adults, regardless of the end results of those choices.
Then again, I may just be stuck in the 70's .... as in 1776.
Sadly, our Founding Fathers could not foresee that our government was eventually going to be bought and paid for by big business through lobbyists. Our Founding Fathers didn't have that piece of the puzzle as they fought for individual rights.
Something has to counter that power....and the best "something" we have right now is regulation.
Things are edging over into politics on here, which are a no-no ( 5 Things We Don't Talk About ) and OP seems to have vented sufficiently, so time to put this thread to sleep.
(edited to fix accidental smiley)