Friday, February 20, 2009

Survival of the unfittest

Their seems to be a certain irony with people who most love to believe in Darwin's "survival of the fittest", love to subsidize those things that don't work in life.

David Brooks....
Over the last few months, we’ve made a hash of all that. The Bush and Obama administrations have compensated foolishness and irresponsibility. The financial bailouts reward bankers who took insane risks. The auto bailouts subsidize companies and unions that made self-indulgent decisions a few decades ago that drove their industry into the ground.

The stimulus package handed tens of billions of dollars to states that spent profligately during the prosperity years. The Obama housing plan will force people who bought sensible homes to subsidize the mortgages of people who bought houses they could not afford. It will almost certainly force people who were honest on their loan forms to subsidize people who were dishonest on theirs.

These injustices are stoking anger across the country, lustily expressed by Rick Santelli on CNBC Thursday morning. “The government is promoting bad behavior!” Santelli cried as Chicago traders cheered him on. “The president ... should put up a Web site ... to have people vote ... to see if they want to subsidize losers’ mortgages!”

Look I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I learn from my mistakes. After my divorce, I went on a $42,000 credit card bender with a bunch of honeys.

I didn't file bankruptcy and/or ask for credit card forgiveness. What did I do? I did this crazy shit like taking a second job and paying for my bender.

Trust me. Every night I was in that grocery store stocking bologna, I asked myself the question "Was it worth it". And self always answered "Hell no". And guess what? It won't happen again.

So excuse me if I have little sympathy for people who won't exhaust every avenue to make their lives work. It's a hard lesson but one that pays dividends in the long run. Something a government program will never do.

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