Get a Widget for this title
RSS Feed
Is it fair to force people who have faithfully paid their mortgages to bail out those who haven't?
Is it fair to force people who have faithfully paid their mortgages to bail out those who haven't?
Title endorsed in part by:
Results so far:
| Yes | 18% | 45 votes | Total: 246 votes | |
| No | 82% | 201 votes |
Yes
Write now
Print
Invite a writer™
Add to Favorites
Is it fair for the U.S. government to help some people and not others? While this may initially seem like an unfair practice, it happens all the time, and most people are fine with it. Unemployment, for example, is paid to people who have lost their jobs. Those who haven't lost their jobs don't get this help. Is it unfair? In the strictest sense of the word, it is. But most of us realize that certain people will need help from time to time, and that it is appropriate and good to help them out, even if this means that others who don't receive help are, through their taxes, bailing out those who need help.
This current mortgage crisis is another example of this same basic principle. Some people are no longer able to pay their mortgages, and they need help in order to retain their homes. The basic question many people are asking is why certain homeowners can no longer afford to pay their mortgages. For some, it may be their own fault they bought more home than they could reasonably afford, and were banking on property values continuing to rise. For others, they may have been the victims of predatory lending lenders who gave them poisonous loans with prepayment penalties, rate adjustments, and other obstacles they didn't fully understand. Still others have been hit by the current financial crisis with job loss (or even job reduction) or other income interruption. With many complicated factors at work, it is difficult to draw any kind of a line to say that the government should only help people retain their homes as long as forces outside their control have caused them to need help. It is fair and right for them to help all these people in need, even though they are not helping everyone equally.
In the current mortgage crisis, even those who have faithfully paid their mortgages will see their property values drop if the houses in their neighborhood are foreclosed on, so everyone stands to lose from foreclosures. People are asked to provide help, through the taxes they pay, that will almost certainly provide an indirect benefit to the very people paying those taxes. While mortgage help is not directly provided to everyone equally, at least some benefits are there for everyone, even if those benefits are indirect.
The government does and should help select groups of people in just about every federally-sponsored program. Even the progressive income tax code taxes higher-earning people a greater percentage of their income than lower-earning people. Is that unfair? Some may say yes, but, as many are finding out, you never know when you may need a little assistance from this unfair system, and if and when that day comes, you may be very glad to have some unfair help.
Learn more about this author, Mark Schwartz.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
No
Is it fair to force people who have faithfully paid their mortgages to bail out those who haven't?
The United States of America has come to a critical point in its history. We have political leaders who seem not to care about, or even have read the Constitution they are sworn to uphold. We are not really talking about fairness here... we're talking about rights, about justice and about tyranny. This nation was founded on the principle that government should not in any way violate the rights of its citizens. Our founders fought a war of independence to establish protection for those rights. But these days, no one seems to even know what a true right is.
Do you have the right to use government force to take your neighbors' money to pay for your mortgage? For your food? For your health care? If so, where does it end? At what point does your supposed right to loot other peoples' property stop?
Am I too far out here? We're not talking about rights we are talking about fairness... or are we? Are we talking about justice? Are we talking about free people or about slaves? Are we talking about true rights or are we talking about what some people believe they are entitled to?
No law abiding person should be forced to do anything against their will. As soon as you introduce government (i.e. force) into any proposed bailout scheme, regulation or project supported by taxation you are already violating the individual rights of everyone who has the money taken from them. We do in fact have the right to our own lives, our own property and our own judgment. We do not have the right to impose our needs onto others when our judgment, or lack of it, has failed to work out as we might have hoped.
If a person cannot afford the mortgage they contracted to pay then they should sell the house to someone who can afford it and become a renter. No one forced them to take on loans they could not pay. I don't care how attractive the offer seemed at the time, if a person has so poor of judgment and so little thought to planning for contingencies then failure is what they deserve. That is true justice. That is fair. That is reality. The desire to buy something does not mean others should be saddled with the bill.
There is a word for people who hold out a hand to get something for free; beggars. There is a word for people who take something without consent; thieves. There is a word for a government that ignores the rights of the people it is supposed to protect; tyrannical.
I sincerely hope everyone who cares about the future of this nation will read the Declaration of Independence and look for a reference to the word tyranny. The document itself explains the remedy.
Learn more about this author, Boxer Wyze.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
Difference of opinion? Debate now.
