Posted on 06/10/2008 11:11:57 AM PDT by neverdem
The people who created this country built a moral structure around money. The Puritan legacy inhibited luxury and self-indulgence. Benjamin Franklin spread a practical gospel that emphasized hard work, temperance and frugality. Millions of parents, preachers, newspaper editors and teachers expounded the message. The result was quite remarkable.
The United States has been an affluent nation since its founding. But the country was, by and large, not corrupted by wealth. For centuries, it remained industrious, ambitious and frugal.
Over the past 30 years, much of that has been shredded. The social norms and institutions that encouraged frugality and spending what you earn have been undermined. The institutions that encourage debt and living for the moment have been strengthened. The country’s moral guardians are forever looking for decadence out of Hollywood and reality TV. But the most rampant decadence today is financial decadence, the trampling of decent norms about how to use and harness money.
Sixty-two scholars have signed on to a report by the Institute for American Values and other think tanks called, “For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture,” examining the results of all this. This may be damning with faint praise, but it’s one of the most important think-tank reports you’ll read this year.
The deterioration of financial mores has meant two things. First, it’s meant an explosion of debt that inhibits social mobility and ruins lives. Between 1989 and 2001, credit-card debt nearly tripled, soaring from $238 billion to $692 billion. By last year, it was up to $937 billion, the report said.
Second, the transformation has led to a stark financial polarization. On the one hand, there is what the report calls the investor class. It has tax-deferred savings plans, as well as an army of financial advisers. On the other hand, there is the...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Let's just hope the end result isn't what came after the Weimar Republic.
Like anything, there has to be a balance.
Too much credit - well we all know what happens there.
Too little credit in this modern world is also a negative and stifles growth.
This is a scenario where common sense and a middle-ground position makes sense.
The great seduction is thinking the Gov’t can get people to put there money where the Gov’t thinks best. If there are dis-incentives to saving or “industriousness” then it is soley due to the consequences of Gov’t tax and fiscal policy.
The influence of the Puritans on US culture is greatly overstated. Lutherans and Catholic have had for more influence.
Credit Cards + women = Imelda Marcos
It’s interesting that this article comes from the leader of the Dinasaur media...folks who contributed greatly to our present state.
Is it just me, or has the word "create" been co-opted to mean invented, drawn, written, in the case of the example, founded, and other such words?
To create means to cause to come into existence out of nothing.
Only God can create.
Hail Obama!
David Brooks is the NY Times' token conservative. IIRC, he got his start at National Review.
wait — the NYT preaching about morality and money? puh-leeze.
another coincidence.
Well Brooksy has been around the NYT long enough to know the best job still on the comatose old Grey Lady is writing obituaries. Seems he is auditioning to get a promotion by writing an obituary on the economy or the country, I really couldn’t nail down his object.
The scenario also begs for a moral undercurrent in society. A moral person will borrow with interest only when they know they will be able to repay the loan with interest and still benefit from it. A typical example would be for start up capital to get an idea or business off the ground and where the borrower is providing a good or service for his fellow man. An immoral or amoral person makes no such consideration and uses credit merely to delay their having to pay for (i.e. take responsibility for) the acquisition of some material comfort, and may have no good faith intention of repaying the loan in the first place.
Puritans—maybe not. But no denomination had more thrifty influence than Presbyterianism . It’s why you used to see so much **plaid** in advertisements about saving money—skinflint Scots.
This piece is part of a long-range strategic PR set up, from the leftist heart of Obama’s real party. The real “debt” they are trying to direct everyone’s attention to is the federal debt (and the sound-bites from this and similar pieces will be lifted into Obama’s speeches) and the “frugal” solutions this piece is intended to support is higher taxes, not lower spending, to reduce the federal debt.
Whether in the “economy”, or in funding the gubernut, the Obama program is to “equalize” the suffering of the American people, to prepare them for that “suffering” and get them to feel patriotic for doing so - like the early “progressives” the program is fascist.
The piece is very good about using targets (the individual) to receive the psychological theme (frugality) that are not the true targets to which the continuation of the theme is to be applied (the gubernut) and doing so while lifting up the means (savings - in other words “not spending), which is a means of “frugality” which they have no intention of applying to the gubernut.
In reality, if the Obama crew has their way you will have to save more because your taxes will not leave you enough to pay a modest and frugal compliment of debt. That day is what this piece is attempting to prepare Americans for. That day is coming if we get too many more “liberal” years of government because the liberals will no more tame their thousands of as-yet-unannounced new social-engineering programs (like today’s $20 billion “green schools” program) than they will reduce the claims on the social insecurity or medi-uncare programs - together underfunded currently by $95 trillion over the next 50 years [needs an average of $1.8 trillion more a year].
ping
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