16th
America’s “If You Want It, You Can Have It” Complex
I am not about to pretend to be a financial genius for even a second here.
However, the current financial crisis facing the United States has more than just a financial angle that is stuck squarely in its badly-wounded side. It also possesses a very distinct psychological angle that has added the necessary fuel to stoke the flames of economic cataclysm and long-term uncertainty that plague the country and its citizens.
So what really lies at the base of the worst American economic predicament since the 1930s? My answer may surprise you, but hopefully it will also enlighten you in ways that numbers simply cannot.
Our attitude.
It is easy to simply insist that just risky investing practices by billion-dollar Wall Street firms is the reason that the American economy is doing a self-destructive dance right now. That is not true. It is equally easy to assume that just banks who issued subprime loans are to blame for the economy’s hemorrhaging of everything not tied down and double-knotted.
It is irresponsible and simplistic to purely blame the big guys who hold more cards than Joe and Jane Sixpack do, granted they obviously have played a tremendous role in proving the irrefutable value of financial regulation in the 21st century, as opposed to unchecked speculation and saccharine optimism in the face of much darker realities.
Yes, it took America this long to re-learn than it’s *gasp* not always going to turn out well when you let Junior play with matches. Repeatedly. Without watching him. At all. However, every recipe (including those for economic disaster) need many ingredients to come together in the right proportions, and there is one unique ingredient that most major media outlets are not giving the time of day to.
It’s not simply the economy, it’s our attitude, stupid.
Personal responsibility doesn’t always sell out concert halls and sports stadiums here in the US, which is why so many are so quick to blame the financial doldrums on just Bush/Iraq/uncertainties surrounding domestic security/bad speculative banking practices/that statue of the bull in Lower Manhattan, when it is a much deeper internal characteristic that really dictates the current soap opera from Hell that is our current financial miasma.
Quite simply, as Americans we suffer from the “If you want it, you can have it” complex.
I know what you may be thinking about that one right from the get-go: that ain’t in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders! Doesn’t need to be. It’s already proven to be a bonafide ship-sinker and doesn’t need Jung or Freud to certify it as such.
Over the course of attaining various degrees of financial success here in the US, we Americans have taken for granted our oh-so-important material possessions. What with our three-story estates and zinging Corvettes, it’s a bit hard to believe, right? It’s true though. We have extravagantly dwelled in the fantasy land of get now and pay later, easy credit, low-interest loans and 0% APR for the first 18 months for a few decades now—this is not exactly a surprise that hopped up over from behind our La-Z-Boy and held a knife to our throats out of nowhere. We have invited the uninvited into our homes by spending foolishly, and often spend for the sake of spending.
But why in the hell would we do such a thing? Wouldn’t we have the foresight to know that putting off that 10-page research paper in high school only made for wretchedly sleepless nights and bouts with insanity down the line with less time left on the clock?
Again, our attitude. Or as it has come to be unfortunately known, “our way of life.”
Enjoy it now! Pay for it later!
Those who hold the money are those who hold the power in America, and at some point, someone came up with the concept of loaning handfuls of money to those who didn’t have quite enough for that couch they wanted to sit on, that fast convertible they wanted to drive, that beautiful house on the hill that they envied. Credit companies and loaning institutions to the rescue! If you want it, you can have it, and only in America! And only for 0.9% APR for the first year!
Giving free-spending, unflappable Americans credit—which is nothing more than a bank-backed, high-interest marinated IOU—has turned out to be more dangerous than handing them Colt M4 Carbine rifles and telling them each to go catch their own dinner at the local zoo.
The American approach to what is feasible, reasonable, and vitally important is fatally flawed. It is the dumb assumption that (still) it is what we have that makes us important, cool, sexy, powerful, etc. This is the ingredient that makes the recipe for disaster complete, and is less a quick fix and more of a deeply-ingrained cultural defect that is eating us alive.
If today looks an awful lot like the dark days of the 1930s, it’s mostly our own damn fault.
We got what we wanted, now it’s time to pay.
