Sobering but Insightful

Last month Philip Klein wrote an article for The American Spectator magazine that really stuck with me. Even if we are not immediately and personally affected by the current economic crisis, it is going to change our lives sooner or later, in one way or another, and as Christians called to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, it's important to understand as best we can what's going on. Here is an excerpt from the article:

I've been thinking about my father's first television.It was a proud moment for my grandfather, a bread truck driver of modest means, to be able to purchase a TV for his family. Back in the 1940s when the technology was still young, the cost of a new set represented a significant portion of his annual salary and so he had to wait until he had saved enough money. When the time came, as my dad tells it, his father got all dressed up in a suit and tie just to withdraw cash from the local bank before heading to the store to buy one of those giant monuments with tiny black and white screens that only transmitted a few channels. A lot has changed in the intervening decades, and not just the fact that the technology has improved dramatically. Even as lawmakers consider unprecedented action to remove troubled home loans from a financial system that is facing the consequences of its easy lending practices, the front page of the Best Buy website features a picture of a large flat-screen HDTV with the pitch: "No Interest for 3 Years on TVs $999 and Up."In today's America, if you want a new television, or iPod, or laptop computer, or Blu-ray player, or designer refrigerator, no matter whether or not you can afford it, some company -- somewhere -- will loan you the money. In 2007, the average American household had $9,840 in credit card debt. . . . Though Americans saved 7.2 percent of their disposable income in 1950, last year the rate was merely 0.6 percent.The proximate cause of the current financial crisis may have been bad home loans made a few years ago, but on a deeper level, the crisis has been brewing for decades, and it is just a symptom of a larger problem rooted in the transformation of the nation's basic mindset into one of instant gratification, in which Americans consume without regard to their ability to pay, and without thinking about the long-term consequences. . . . The root of our current problem is not . . . "illiquid mortgage assets" -- for they are only a symptom. The root of the problem is a culture in which Americans live beyond their means, in the moment, without taking any responsibility for their actions, and assume that American ingenuity will find a way to fix the problem somewhere down the road -- at somebody else's expense.

You can read the entire thing by clicking here.