to dress decently. No personal responsibility, you see?
"Tracy Banham’s credit card limit was raised several times without asking, despite her making only the minimum payments. This left her with more than £28,000 of borrowing to repay alone."
Notice the cause of her debt was the credit limit being increased. Nothing to do with her spending the money.
Now do you understand me? A suit, a crsiply ironed white shirt, polished shoes and a perfectly knotted tie. These things will keep you in good mental, physical and economic health.
I was thinking the other day that, due to the general softness of society and the educational system these days, there are millions of adults walking the streets who have never been punched in the face. Now I'm sure pretty much everyone of our generation has been punched in the face at one time or another and it has taught us salutary lessons. But what can a generation of kids who've never had a slap possibly know about anything?
It worries me. It really does.
Much like the 2008 crash, actually.
How many times have we seen the accusation of 'irresponsible lending' leveled against banks without ever seeing the corresponding allegation of 'irresponsible borrowing' being leveled against the individuals who borrowed money they could not pay back?
Institutions are easy targets you see, individuals - especially the disadvantaged - less so.
Ah, but if you take that view that some individuals are stupid, feckless, greedy, and so on, while banking institutions are intelligent, wise, experienced, sober, sensible and fore-seeing, then why on this earth do the banks keep lending these individuals money that they know won't get paid back?
I mean, you can expect stupid people to be stupid, right? So why are smart people like you giving these people money? I mean, as thay say, duh?
In the case of banking, I would agree with you only to the extent that, by lending irresponsibly, the banks put themselves and their shareholders in jeopardy. That is mismanagement. The individuals, however, deserve no protection from their own stupidity. It's like these fixed odds betting machines that everyone gets upset about. Now I am actually quite puritanical about gambling on a personal level. I think that, of the vices, it is one of the least forgivable. However, I see no reason to protect someone from their own lack of impulse control. If they're stupid enough to keep feeding money into a loaded game, too bad about them. Nature has a way of taking care of such people.
There are many ways to answer those questions but the simplest is probably that even very intelligent people aren't perfect and can make mistakes and not just once, but on an ongoing basis.
See also, the Vietnam War.
But that fact doesn't mean that the ignorant masses who borrowed money they shouldn't have don't share in the responsibility for the crash and subsequent events. That narrative won't sell as many newspapers as 'evil bankers cause crash and misery and then pocket huge bonus etc etc' though.
Why is this, in your opinion? Gambling is a vice that I have managed to avoid, having no interest in it, but I don't understand why I am not interested in it, given it's evident popularity, and my enthusiasm at various points for drinking, smoking and drugging. Perhaps I just go for chemical stimulants, rather than the exciting prospect of losing a lot of money.