The term “social contract” gets thrown around a lot — but its use is generally limited to the relationship between government and citizens. I’d like to point out that there’s another dimension here that’s being ignored at the moment: the social contract between individual members of society.
In terms of the current crisis, it goes like this: if you are financially irresponsible, you screw it all up for the rest of us.
Now, being financially irresponsible is not the same thing as “less productive” or “poor” or “disadvantaged”. Nor does it include people who were sold financial products under false or misleading terms; lenders who engaged in such practices need punitive consequences, complete with bars and infrequent visiting hours.
What I’m talking about here are those millions of people who took out mortgages that they could not afford, using unknowable and impossible future home values as collateral, while the rest of us continued to plug away, day in and day out, playing by the rules.
You remember the rules, right? Those pesky little hindrances to instant millions, like: significant down-payments, and debt-to-income ratios, and living within one’s means.
Because everybody didn’t buy into this pie-in-the-sky housing-values-only-go-up BS… but it will be the fiscally-responsible people who will bail the country out.
I’ve been reading a lot online about the dastardly governmental monsters who are about to reward the corporate evil-doers who have pillaged the poor and raped the wide-eyed innocents.
Yes, the government’s looking monstrous… and yes, corporations have done evil stuff…. but this didn’t happen in a vacuum, people.
So can we just stop for a second with the populist bloviating? Because it’s really starting to tick me off.