Ekdog

Even commercial radio was different in those days. Back in the 60s, 70s and early 80's, I'd listen to talk shows on a.m. radio that, thanks to the Fairness Doctrine, exposed me to a wide range of ideas. But since 1987, when the FCC decided to eliminate the Doctrine, the dissemination of contrasting views has been lost as corporations have taken over station after station and steadily eliminated dissenting voices.

One of the stations I listened to as a kid was KGO. They'd continued to provide listeners with a variety of viewpoints, from moderately liberal to conservative, up until December 1st, when Cumulus Media fired almost all of their hosts and, for all intents and purposes, stifled debate. Their former listeners are up in arms and trying to fight back (https://www.facebook.com/FormerKGOListeners), but corporate power is great.

These developments are terrifying. As you say, Christoph, the internet is the last bastion of free speech, but for how long?

JeanSeb

I've heard a young woman say that a few years ago, after she bought a brand new car and was racking up huge phone bills with her cellphone. She said she was having money problems, I told her she could sell her car and buy something used... she said; " I deserve that car !" I thought to myself "well maybe you deserve to have money problems".

wahoonc

I know people who are upside down on their cars until the last year of payments. Prime example is the hit in value that SUV's took when gas prices spiked over $4 a gallon. Also if you follow a couple of links from that article, many of the working poor buy from the "buy here, pay here" places. That is a form of predatory lending and in many cases they end up paying over $30,000 for a vehicle that is worth less than $10k. Not everyone has decent enough credit to be able to buy a newer car from a reputable source. Most low end trade in's are worth very little, in most cases not enough to even make half the down payment on a newer vehicle.

Aaron

wahoonc

BINGO! Sense of entitlement...downfall of many a person. Interestingly enough that is what is rammed down our throats by advertising and the government in an attempt to maintain a consumer based economy.

Aaron

Mobile 155

It seems as if that is a reasonable assessment that few today want to hear. People make choices and suffer or prosper based on that choice. Like some here I tried to live under my earnings and was maybe even a bit timid in my purchases. So far that form of living has served me well as long as the economy doesn't completely self destruct. I am dept free in that I own nothing on credit. There are times when the bike shop has a special deal on some super trick dream machine made of unobtainium and electric shifters that they will sell with no payments for a year that I am tempted but reason always slaps me in the face and I pass.

That being said I wonder if we aren't trying to shift blame from the people to the object they bought. If you make X amount you know you can only spend X amount and simply wanting something doesn't change that fact. People talk about the expense of owning a car as if it is insurmountable but obviously it isn't because not everyone is impoverished by the experience. Some people have even bought a house and paid if off so they can retire with no house payments and no rent.

In reality aren't we as individuals responsible for how we live? Aren't we responsible for what we listen to? Yes some can't help themselves but are they the majority? I have always wondered if we as a society aren't as guilty as the banks for the housing market problems. After all did we really think someone making 30K a year could afford a 500K home? I understand the banks made the loans but the buyers should have seen that they only had X to spend shouldn't they?

wahoonc

It is about personal responsibility, but you don't offer booze to a recovering alcoholic either...

Unfortunately the two things you cannot legislate are personal responsibility or morals.

Aaron

tony_merlino

I'm an ex-smoker and a recovering alcoholic. (I haven't had a cigarette or a drink in many years). It never once occurred to me to blame the tobacco industry or the alcohol industry or anyone but myself for my addictions. And people still offer me drinks all the time. I thank them and refuse. The ones who are insistent about it get crossed off my list of people to hang with. What's the problem?

Roody

I'm not denying the role of consumer responsibility. In some cases, people could have made better decisions about how to spend and invest their hard-earned money.

OTOH, there are other individuals who made huge personal fortunes through deception and fraud. These bankers and financiers should be in prison, but they haven't been made to accept responsibility for their actions, so they continue to make fraudulent fortunes. I'm sorry to say it, but I think many of you conservatives have been duped into abetting these fraudsters with this "personal responsibility" mythology.

Bomccorkle

Sometimes, the things we own begin to own us.....

Caretaker

Totally agree.

If you're going to talk about 'personal responsibility' you should start at the top and work your way down.

Knowledge and culpability are closely related.

tony_merlino

Roody, did you just call me a CONSERVATIVE??? That's pretty funny. I don't know how old you are, but I can tell you that I've been further left than 99% of the people in the USA since supporting Eugene McCarthy back in 1968.

I agree with you about the bankers and financiers who created the sausage bonds that precipitated our current mess. But how is holding them personally responsible for what they did inconsistent with holding Daryl responsible for the choices he made?

Believe it or not, one can be a very left-leaning liberal/socialist and STILL believe that living on the very edge is a bad choice that belongs to the person who makes it. I'll wager that I earn significantly more than 10 times what Daryl does, and I drive a Honda Civic. Again, believe it or not, one can be a liberal and NOT be in hock up to his eyebrows.

I'm not saying Daryl should starve to death because he made bad choices. Only that he needs to suck it up until his car is closer to paid off, and then figure out how to live within his means, with enough left over to give him a little cushion if times get bad. And I can't find it in me to blame his plight on some conspiracy.

Mobile 155

It is quite possible you will lose your lifetime membership to Mother Jones and the Nation. Just saying personal responsibility for our own actions seems to move someone to the right.

tony_merlino

That's frightening! But there are flavors of left/right, not just differences of degree. I'm more of a New Deal/Great Society socialist/liberal type. There are just some things that trip my bogometer. Like blaming people who try to sell me stuff I don't need and can't afford for me buying their stuff, if I'm stupid enough to do it.

Yeah - the auto companies (and all companies that make stuff) spend a lot of money to convince us that we should buy what they make. And they lobby politicians to promote their cause. So what else is new? People who make stuff try to sell it! Wow! Stop the presses! What'll they think of next?

I'm sorry, there's a whole lot of daylight showing in the cracks between a guy who got in a little over his head because he wanted a big shiny SUV on credit, and people who really, for all practical intents and purposes, "owed their souls to the company store" because they simply had no alternative for things like food and firewood.

Part of my problem is that I remember the days when we were fighting against a draft (not just a headwind), an illegal war that sucked up thousands of our young men, when we were marching for desegregation of schools, for fairness in employment and housing, for the right of farm workers to organize, ... and the list goes on.

There are certainly things still worth getting excited about - like the offshoring of so many of our better jobs, like gerrymandering an entire state to give one party a lock on it nearly forever, like the systematic war on the American worker, and so on. Daryl and his big car just don't make the cut.

Artkansas 

Nah. While I feel that personal responsibility is very important, I also realize that none of us are here on our own. None of us can carry the weight of life all the time, we all need that safety net provided by others. As people, we all have a right to have it.

But of course, in return, you have an obligation to reach out beyond your own needs and help others. It's not left or right, it's compassionate and greedy.

I started out on the left and I keep getting lefter.

Artkansas 

I agree, to some extent, Darren created his own problems. But he did it by doing what others did and what much advertising was devoted to convincing him to do. Drive till you qualify, and BIG REBATE! Darren, not being a scholar didn't see beyond the surface. He wasn't sufficiently critical to see that land couldn't keep going up or understand the real estate bubble. That Cavalier of his was one of the classic cheap and expendable cars, there aren't many of them left and his may have been on it's last legs and needed replacement. Big rebates on the Mitsubishi made him think he was getting a deal. He was, but he still owed on the entire amount, and I bet he didn't use the rebate to pay down the loan. He didn't use critical thinking to realize that we've been running out of oil for a long time and that low oil prices were supported by non-ending wars.

You are correct that his problems are not the big ones, but they are symptomatic of the big ones. He was just one more pawn in the Loan Bubble created by Wall Street. In other times he might not have qualified for a loan at all. He was a fellow who tried to maintain his lifestyle by credit when his income was slipping, a common strategy. He got suckered into getting a fuel swilling pig of a car, but he didn't get the connection between fuel prices and war. Media never crossed the t and dotted the i for him; a media owned by the big money and representing big money's interests. Then he lost his job, and coped as well as he could by working where he could find it.

So Darren and his car make the cut for me, because his problems are our problems. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, "As are we all."

Mobile 155

I find it hard to identify with either extreme of the pendulum but that is just me. It is harder to look at it as if all of the people were victims when you look close at how “some” people got where they fell through the cracks. Some people were responsible and as mentioned didn’t buy a home with the maximum payment they could afford. I can remember years ago warning people to hold something back in case of bad times and was almost laughed at. I have watched people making 35k a year buy a 500K home and a new car and a boat. They used the house as a piggy bank till the bottom fell out. And when it fell out they got hit much like the link we have been talking about. Most people that I happen to know are, how it was said, Credit deprived because they didn’t save for much of anything. It was like they didn’t know what cash was for or how to set up a savings account.

tony_merlino

I don't totally disagree, but I don't totally agree with you either. The problem with buying into your argument totally is that it essentially turns Darren (is his name Darren or Daryl?) into a brain-damaged child, completely manipulated by the puppet masters on Wall Street and Madison Avenue, incapable of making choices, incapable of processing information. A mindless creature without values, intellect or judgment.

I can't buy that. Yes - we're all bombarded by messages all the time. Conflicting messages. We - including Darren - pick and choose which ones we decide to accept, which ones we'll reject. Just because someone is trying to sell us something doesn't mean we have to buy it.

You present Darren as a helpless victim. Yet your second paragraph lists a set of CHOICES that he made, with his eyes open. It doesn't describe coercion. When people in my generation were drafted, there was no choice about it - we either went to war, to jail, or to Canada. When an African American was denied housing or employment because of his race, he didn't choose for that to happen. When a plant that employed half the workers in a town shut down and moved the work to Mexico or China, those workers had no choice about that. These people were victims. Darren, if he was a victim of anything, was a victim of his own avarice.

Darren was subjected to aggressive marketing, but in the end, he made his choices and has to live with the consequences. Do I feel bad that he was convinced that he could have more than he really could afford, and that now he may lose what he probably never should have had anyway? Sure - I don't like to see anyone suffer. But I can't feel the same kind of outrage that you do. At the risk of sounding really callous, I'll point out that, in a sane world, he never would have had even a couple of years of that nice life.

Roody

I have no idea what your personal politics are. But I do know that a lot of this "personal responsibility" crap is perpetrated by (mostly conservative) politicians as a screen and cover to protect the criminals who profited from creating economic conditiosns that harmed millions of good working families.

Suburban

It's easy to say people are addicted to credit and buying stuff. But I've come to realize that much of the population is innumerate and they don't know enough to realize that they don't know enough. How many years did it take for the general public to realize that paying the minimum payment on a credit card will take an eternity to pay it off? Why did it take so long for the general public to realize this? Because the general public is innumerate. We put so much emphasis on making sure that everyone is literate. I've been shocked by how many people look at basic math as though it were quantum physics. But discussing finances with friends and writing contracts with clients, I've realized that most people are functionally innumerate and something should be done about this.

When Daryl made his decisions, my guess is that he hadn't calculated gas mileage, depreciation, interest rates on loan, insurance etc... And I wonder if he knew enough to think about these things.

There's more than this issue going into these decisions. But I think this plays a large part.

Roody

Another reason is that the banks and credit card companies write the contracts in language that not even a law professor can understand. They deliberately make the agreements obscure because they don't want people to pay off their balances. If we all paid off our balances, they would not make a dime.

The same kind of argument can be made about home mortgages and car notes.

Artkansas 

Well, I don't feel outrage. Darren is not helpless, but he's been pushed around a lot. Drive till you qualify and BIG REBATES are two common California memes. Many of my co-workers lived 50-60 miles out of town. I know I considered the drive till you qualify when I lived in San Diego. My ex and I found a perfect property out in Boulevard, but ultimately decided against it. Yes, he made his choices, but I do see Darren as a bit of a patsy, and a bit of a poster child for what is happening to all of us, or at least 99% of us as we are pushed about by the world. He's a good symbol because he got involved in many of the ways the people got financially trapped.

He didn't make wise choices. Did he have the information he needed? In this forum, there are a lot of us who escaped the consequences of similar choices because we know how to do critical thinking, I think we tend to be of above average intelligence as well, so we know how to see through issues a little more. It's been shown that if you pump certain information at people enough, they tend to believe it. I'm sorry, but expecting most people to be able to see through the tsunami of disinformation is expecting a lot. He made his choices and is living with the consequences. But to me he's symbolic of how people are getting pushed around in general.

As a side note, you mentioned that peoples whose jobs were shipped off to other countries were victims, not he. His job disappeared too. As someone who's seen one of his jobs go to Indonesia and the next one disappear to domestic conditions a couple of years later, you'll have to explain the difference to me.

And let's not talk about what Darren would do in a sane world unless you can find one for us to test his reaction there.

Mobile 155

looks like the tide is turning on Darren. I still don't know that we should assume all of these people and less intelligent. They were hammered just as hard by consumer advocates on TV and in print on how to get out of or not get into the dept trap. Yes they were lured by the advertisements but they had a chance to hear the other side as well.

My grandfather started out as a farmer. Moved to California in the 40s to get a job in the aircraft industry. He only knew one phrase in Latin, Caveat Emptor. He taught it to my dad, my dad drummed it into me and with any luck I have passed it on to my son. Mankind has been living by that phrase for more than 2000 years and it still works.

Ekdog

It's time you learned another Latin phrase: Caveat venditor . I'm glad we have laws that protect consumers from fraudulent advertising and dangerous and harmful products, even though the trend in the United States seems to be moving away from such protection. I've read that many Chinese manufacturers have two lines of production, one for the United States, which is much more lenient when it comes to allowing the use of toxic materials and shoddy, dangerous workmanship, and another line for the European Union, which is much stricter about this and seems to take their citizens' health and safety more seriously. This is a real shame, especially when you consider that the U.S. was once in the vanguard of progressive consumer legislation.

tony_merlino

But what do you do about that? You can't force people to learn math. (By the way - I completely agree with you - I deal with this all the time, and it's incredibly frustrating that people don't apply simple, grade-school arithmetic to their decisions. And, by the way, I see that sort of sloppiness as much, or even more, here than out in society at large. There's nobody more allergic to doing the math than an advocate.)

If we can't force people to be smart, or to be vigilant, is the only choice to protect them like mentally challenged children? Do we need to create laws that force our society to function on a level that the average pre-schooler could navigate? Or does it make more sense to emphasize being vigilant and to work the numbers? I favor the latter - I really don't feel like living in a padded cell.

tony_merlino

I have paid my entire credit card balance every month for the last 35 years. They still keep trying to give me cards, still keep raising my credit limit. Remember - merchants pay a fee for every transaction. It's a myth that the credit card companies don't make money if you pay off your balance. They'd be laughing all the way to the bank if they weren't already there.