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Is it fair to force people who have faithfully paid their mortgages to bail out those who haven't?

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Yes		18%	45 votes	Total: 246 votes
No		82%	201 votes	Total: 246 votes

Yes

9 of 11

Is it fair to force people who have faithfully paid their mortgages to bail out those who haven't? There are reasonable people who can afford to pay their mortgages because they have the capital wherewithal to come up with the necessary dollars to cover the mortgage. On the other hand, there are equally reasonable people who would pay their mortgages but can't afford to pay their installments when due because they do not have the money to cover the amount due.

We are assuming that those who faithfully pay have the means to pay, whereas those who don't had the means until such time as they no longer did. We are not talking about deadbeats.

Much turns on intent, if we are talking about homes bought with intent to defraud, that's a different category. It would be true of people who obtain food stamps fraudulently. In neither scenario are taxpayers forced to pay to help subsidize payment to owners of the debt what is owed. Eventually, those people will go to jail as a result of a government audit or whistle-blower. But, in the meantime, banks have a built-in risk surcharge just to cover the eventuality.

As for lenders sharing responsibility or alleviating the problem if at fault by forgiving the loan or by reducing interest rates, that's unlikely. That's where the government steps in to correct an egregious problem.

Maybe it is true as one writer suggests that taxpayers in their initial response to a financial crisis are like children who cry out, "It's not fair."

Is it fair to force people who disagree with the current wars to share in the cost of these wars? These are frivolous questions to many who would not join those who would ask, Is it fair to donate money to feed the hungry or to alleviate the suffering of those who live in disaster prone areas of the country?

The argument supporting a view of unfairness is the same for those who cannot afford their homes because of bad loans and those who lose their homes because of an act of nature. As a people, the American taxpayer ends up helping to "bail out" those who have the misfortune of finding themselves in these circumstances through no fault of their own.

Some are lucky enough to have insurance for some of the problems we have noted, but many more are denied insurance, particularly, if there is a great likelihood that one who experiences a flood in a flood plain is more likely to experience repeated flooding. Insurance is not available unless the government steps in.

Therefore, in many, already existing situations, the only way that some of us might survive the aftermath of a calamitous event is to have the government bail us out. Since prognostication is not by line of work, I would thank God for the government's hand in saving me and my family from dire circumstances far worse than those I risk enduring as a result of a crisis. I think that most Americans would agree.

Learn more about this author, Gerard Coulombe.
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No

9 of 13

by George Merritt

Here in America, we have a democracy which has succeeded for the most part due to the fact of people working for a living in a Capitalistic economic system. Socialism is not a solution to any of our current problems, matter of fact it would make, or is making things worse as people coddle Obama and his socialist view, for whatever reason. That is not meant to imply that everyone is coddling him though.

Change is happening; people are beginning to realize the fix, the true fix we are in. It started years ago when the bankers and mortgage brokers, along with the government allowing the likes of Fannie and Freddie, not to mention Habitat for Humanity, giving everybody and his brother a home loan or almost free home, whether they could pay it back or not. Of course the whole industry of Real estate and Developers did not help as when you build or develop to provide homes in order to exploit the ignorance of some without creating any value and or inflating prices in order to make a quick profit no one is actually being helped in the long run. Long run is where we are now as a result of the greed, period. Not to mention urban living and planners who just love to have a window two feet from the bedroom of the next door neighbor.

With capitalism we have profit, though with some of the current thinking along with some of the past thinking which got us here, many have wanted and did at times, split up the pie into so many pieces that everyone wondered at the end where all the profit went. In other words socialists love to give everyone a cut, even if they did no or little work. Though of course the folks up front did make a profit, all those brokers and bankers, and do not forget the realtors. No not everyone is a crook, though when you have a bad apple in the crate, you need to get rid of it quick in order that all the apples do not rot.

Look at history, for example Plymouth, when the first settlers came to America, they made an effort to give everyone equal shares of land to work, and found out that some people do all the work while the rest do almost nothing. Well it did not last long, as most people in a free democracy will not just give their money away just for the heck of it. Might as well throw it in the sea instead of making it work for whatever business you may be in. In other words even though we do have corruption within a democratic capitalistic economic society, it is much less detrimental to the whole than with Socialism where the government tells you what you can and can not do with your own mostly hard earned money.

All people need to learn to work, be reasonably responsible, and learn to love others in a way which allows the whole to flourish. Those who do not want to work have nothing. That is not to say that people incapable of work have nothing, as in disabilities and such, just that there is no free ride. It is arguable though when we think of the people who take advantage of ignorance, yet in a democracy freedom does not mean one needs to be stupid.

Long and short of it is no one deserves to get bailed out of the hole, especially when they signed the papers without reading the fine print, (what is a balloon mortgage?). Greed is a two way street, with both ways being ignorant, as usually both will lose somewhere down the line. Now everyone is paying for it, even those who were not, and did not want to be in the game.

Of course that is the short and simple version.

Learn more about this author, George Merritt.
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