What is being an adult all about?
Doesn’t maturity have to do with taking responsibility for your life, for your decisions?
Of course, it is often appropriate to ask for help, to underwrite dreams or salvage the shipwrecks of them when we screw up.
But even when seeking help, you do it like a grown-up rather than, say, a whining child. You ask for the help. Politely. As opposed to assuming that other people just owe it to you, to heck with their own circumstances and priorities.
Yet government now subsidizes every big-ticket project on our every wish list, hurling more money at us when we botch the job. It’s as if they’re paying us to be irresponsible.
No shock, then, when people do in fact act irresponsibly, buying homes or making loans they can’t really afford.
Ford, GM, and Chrysler — the Big Three of American automakers — now ask for a $50 billion low-interest loan from the U.S. government. Why? So they can modernize their plants to make more efficient cars. What, just $50 billion?
What about me? I need to re-shingle my roof. Please, government, give me a million. Just take it from my neighbors, no problem.
You know, if Chrysler had been allowed to fail back in Iaccoca days, GM and Ford may have learned a lesson — grown up — and wouldn’t think to ask for handouts today. Or need to.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.