Entitlement Crisis

Repeat after me: Handouts will not fix the economy.

Again.

And again.

I am sick and tired of hearing the liberal moonbats go on and on about federally funded programs to 'jump-start' the economy. The hildabeast decided to roll out her plan recently. Basically, she wants to take my hard earned money to bail out the selfish idiots that bought homes far above their means. I bought my house during the great housing boom. I could easily have gotten an adjustable rate mortgage and bought a house that dwarfs my eleven-hundred square feet. But I didn't. You want to know why? Because I'm not stupid. I bought within my means. I don't own a crystal ball that could tell me how the interest rate situation would be for the next 30 years. And neither does anyone else apparently. Now the foreclosures are flying and I am supposed to not only feel sorry for the people lacking the common sense to understand what they were betting into but also to foot the bill for their financial blunders. As if the stalling and dropping housing values weren't punishment enough.

Here's another thing to repeat: Adjustable Rate means that the interest rate will change.

Again.

You know, we've made bad financial decisions. We ran up a crap load of credit card debt and then couldn't pay it off. Guess who bailed us out. No one. We worked it out with the various creditors. We made payment arrangements. I took out a loan against my 401K. We did whatever it took. The creditors made deals with us. Some accepted reduced payoffs if we could give them a lump sum. The amount they write-off counts as income. You have to report it on your taxes. The tax hit for us was enough that we had to take out another loan. Nasty interest rate since we had run our credit score into the ground. Just as we paid that loan off, I lost my job. You know what happens to a 401K loan when you lose your job? It becomes a withdrawal. Which translates into another big tax hit. That loan is finally paid off. We've worked hard to rebuild our credit from our own financial blunders. It wasn't easy, but it also wasn't the responsibility of anyone else but us. Yeah, it sucked. It hurt to eat Ramen and drive a car with over 300,000 miles. I personally replaced the transmission on that one since we could afford to pay to have it done. Ordered the replacement transmission on eBay.

I'm not looking for any kind of sympathy there. We were stupid, and we had to make the sacrifices for it. Never once did we put our hands out to Uncle Sam to fix it for us. And we easily qualified to do so. The poverty line looked like a lofty goal at the time.

I'm ashamed of my peers in the entitlement generation. I'm appalled at out over-burdened system. I've no expectation of ever receiving a dime of the social security I have paid into my entire working life. It's embarrassing that this is the state of our society. People have forgotten that they make their own luck.

The only way for the government to help the economy is to cut taxes and government spending. Handouts will not fix the economy. Handouts are what got us here in the first place. You may think I'm crazy, but I think when you give people control of their own money, most will spend it wisely. Those that don't, really aren't my problem. That's not to say I don't support charities. I am absolutely in favor of voluntary charitable giving. I'm just tired of the Robin Hood attitude of the liberals.

Only in Heaven are we entitled to more than we have worked for, and that's because Jesus paid that price.