Torque and Chrome

Have we (as a society) lost our ability to see important priorities?

I see a lot of very questionable priorities both in my professional and personal life. For example, I work as a loan collections officer and often times I'll call someone and get a tear-jerker story about how they're broke and have no money. Then I look in their account and see that they have a $15,000 motorcycle loan, or I'll see lots of transactions where they're going out to eat, or buying jewelry, or something similar. Then when I get out of work and watch the news I've seen things like people pitching tents at 4am in order to get in line to buy an iphone at a mere $600 a piece (its a cellphone for crying out loud!), or when I go out grocery shopping I'll sometimes see someone in front of me paying with food stamps who is wearing very nice shoes and then drives away in a car with chrome rims. Have we as a society gone completely blind to proper budget priorities? What the heck happened? Please share your thoughts. Thank you! flower: the blame-game that you're playing is part of the reason that we have this problem. You're essentially arguing that personal responsibility has nothing to do with it. I must say that I strongly disagree.

Public Comments

1. It's a world gone mad I tell ya! I'm pretty old, so this may not make sense to a lot of people here, but we used to sit around the dinner table together, every night. Yep, that's right. The family ate dinner together, and talked about things like fiscal responsibility, boyfriends, girlfriends, sex, school, etc. They don't teach it in school so where are you supposed to learn it now?
2. An outrageous executive incompenetence at the highest office (president/vp) was tolerated for 8 years by 'society'. What does it tell you about such society ?
3. The going out to eat thing is just a matter of human nature. My grandfather, who owned a restaurant, always used to say: "Go into the food business. No matter how broke someone is, they'll spend their last dime to go out and have a nice dinner." Something about human nature makes us want to enjoy a night on the town and suffer for it later. Also, if I got food stamps I would spend the money I normally would put toward food toward shoes too. Why not? But enough excuse making... Yes, we have. Or at least some of us have. "We are lucky enough to live in a country where even the poor people are fat." - Kurt Vonnegut People who are in that sort of economic situation are in there for a reason. I don't think we can expect them to be good with money. For those who were not always in that situation, it also must be difficult. After bankruptcy, it took my family and I a while to get used to not being able to buy things we once bought without second thought. The truth is, most people don't think about things like that. Yes, many are completely out of their minds, but I think a majority of us have got it going all right.
4. The examples you have cited are precisely why i'm not cool with spreading the wealth. As a culture we do not say "no" to ourselves, we do not understand delayed gratification, and little value is given to using cold hard cash and OWNING things. It must take alot of self control not to blurt out those types of observations at work. How do you do it?
5. I have discussed these same issues with some family members, and yes I think proper budget priorities have gone out the window. There just doesn't seem to be budgetary responsibility. For a short time I worked as a mortgage loan officer and was astounded at the casual way some folks viewed charge offs for cable or cell phone bills. Just remember, there are a lot of people out there really hurting who have been responsible and are just caught up in a very bad economic crunch. I don't know if you can see their credit reports, but it may help you know if you are getting fed a line. Chin up and try to ask the right questions when you are making your calls.
6. Think back to yesteryear. There was a movie with a bit character in the role that everything she saw on TV she just had to have right then and there. That is what America has become. We are told what to wear, what to eat, what to drink, when to sleep. When to wake up and constantly told to spend spend spend. We were told to smoke, then we were told to quit. We were told to drink lots of alcohol and then we are told not to drink then we were told to drink wine. But the point is Either Big Business or the Government are constantly telling Americans what to do because they know what is best. Now we have a at least 2 generations that have been left without a decent education, but can work a computer or play a game, but can't add a column of numbers without a calculator. Can't correct their spelling without computers assistance. Can't perform simple grammatical sentences without the aid of a computer. Cannot write with pen and paper like our founding fathers, much less carry on a decent conversation with out abbreviations. Where does that leave the future of America, I do not know.
7. Y E S
8. For centuries, [our nation] remained industrious, ambitious and frugal." Over the past 30 years much of that legacy "has been shredded," while "the institutions that encourage debt and living for the moment have been strengthened.” "An explosion of debt that inhibits social mobility and ruins lives," because of "people with little access to 401(k)'s or financial planning but plenty of access to payday lenders, credit cards and lottery agents." Among other "agents of destruction" are state lotteries--"a tax on stupidity," which tells people "they don't have to work to build for the future. They can strike it rich for nothing." Other culprits are the astronomical interest rates charged by payday lenders; and the aggressive marketing of credit cards by banks and other financial institutions, as a result of which by the time college students are in their senior year more than half of them have at least four different credit cards. Easy credit facilitates bubbles, such as the housing bubble and the related mortgage-financing bubble, and the bursting of a bubble can, as we have been relearning recently, cause economic dislocations.
9. We lost our priorities as soon as the credit card was invented.