Bacon Saving: The Government Shouldn’t Be In The Bailout Business

Rachel Lucas notes the latest housing crisis sob story and taps into my own frustration:

I have yet to come across a single foreclosure story that inspired anything but scorn in my heart, and I’m a pretty empathetic person. It’s just that every single time, it turns out these people have screwed themselves by making extremely bad decisions and I am so freakin’ SICK of hearing about it. All I want to know is how much of my tax money is going to go to bailing them out. Assholes.

A million stupid people from lenders to regulators to individual buyers made stupid decisions that led to this point. It is not the taxpayer’s job to fix this for them. An inflated market worldwide and stupid short-term thinking fueled this mess.

The government shouldn’t have saved the airlines after 9/11. The government shouldn’t save the savings and loans’ back in the day. The government shouldn’t save the banks and greedy homeowners now. The government shouldn’t bail out Detroit and the car companies, either.

The government is me. And it’s you. The average taxpayer shouldn’t pay for another person’s stupidity and greed. They are called consequences. In a free market (ostensibly) dire consequences are the only thing that keeps irrational behavior in check. The government bailouts create more irresponsibility and all Americans, not just the piggish ones, end up paying the price.

Cross-posted at MelissaClouthier.com

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