Perverse Reasoning

{link » Perverse Thoughts about this Perverse Recession}

“I do not understand at all this going into debt for almost another trillion dollars, and then immediately promising to balance the budget soon (like blowing off your foot near an emergency room), or how ‘stimulate’ differs from ‘borrow’, or why the more noble victim is the one who sought to borrow too much for too much house and then defaulted, rather than he who chose to borrow less for less house and paid his mortgage on time each month and now subsidizes the less responsible. (The former apparently will still have the larger house, the latter the smaller.)” [emphasis added]
 — Victor Davis Hanson

I don't understand any of this either. I must have been on sick leave when this line of reasoning was covered in college.

How is foreclosure any different in principle from eviction for non-payment of rent? If I had chosen to sign a lease for a penthouse apartment that I couldn't afford (for more than a month or two, lets say), would anyone in their right mind have any sympathy for me if my landlord threatened to evict me? I haven't seen any pigs flying around; have you?

This "losing one's home" is pure unadulterated bullshit. The proper terminology is downsizing to a less expensive house or apartment, or moving in with Mom and Dad who had assumed personal accountability for their chosen lifestyle (unless, of course, they happen to be useless hippies, in which case they had previously moved in with their own kids).

Maybe the cries of "socialism" are premature. But the prevailing psychology holding sway in the Federal government has an eerily recognizable feel to it.

Post #646