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Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna
I don't totally disagree I2. Much of the last 30-40 years will be remembered as some pretty good times, times of some pretty significant accomplishment. But it sure seems that the work ethic and moralities of the post-war era and the gray flannel suit generation were slowly replaced by a side towards selfishness, greed, and an erosion of personal morality.
The problem that finally popped within the last year or two wasn't just the result of prior Congresses irrationally pushing for more "affordable housing". Looking at even that problem a little more deeply, what they did was a blatant and self-serving attempt to placate the lower classes so they would re-elect those same members who created the laws you refer to.
The cause of our current situation isn't a few laws which were enacted by Congresses past. Rather, it is the slow and insidious erosion of our cultural mores. That's happened over time and is reflected in everything from the emergence of a drug culture to a President having sex in the oval office to many, many Congressmen "on the take" to the public who was perfectly happy to borrow money on a basis that even a high-schooler could see made no sense. It was a simple, long slide into a pretty dark moral place.
The bubble popped a year or so ago. But the cause has been festering for a lot longer. No one President or one administration is going to solve it. It'll take a lot longer than that. I hope as a people that we can get back to what we do remember as some really good times. It seems to me that to accomplish that is going to take a lot of self-examination by all Americans, probably quite a lot of lifestyle-changing, and a whole lot less of the laissez les bons temps rouler! attitude.
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I think L2 hit the nail on the head. Additionally, I agree that the mores of the nation have hit sewer-level.
However, from an economic standpoint, there have always been congresspersons on the take, other politicians have sweetheart-dealt all sorts of things, and the economy still grew and grew.
Socio-engineering via economic regulation is simply socialism with a prettier cover - and it has failed everywhere! The remaining socialistic governments rely heavily on either subsidies or blind-eye capitalism (Cuba, China, Vietnam and North Korea epitomize this).
So, to say that the current regime should have the power to socio-engineer away freedoms, negate contracts without judicial action and tell us "what's good for us" is what they say it is - that's utterly ridiculous to me. Get them all out of the way, take the wealth-redistribution straphangers out of the game, and actually LIVE what is written in 42 USC 1981, and this nation will go economically and socially stratospheric in a good way.
Continue policies which rob the few Peters left with money to pay all those Pauls with an entitlement mentality and all we will have in the end is a nation which will be another Iceland - taxed to oblivion, high alcoholism, and broke!