Paying back your debt?
Oct. 5th, 2011 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holdtheskyI was interested to see Cameron talking about paying back "our debt" today.
In the early 2000s, I was very dubious about what was going on: it seemed that there wasn't any real growth, that the housing market seemed like a bubble, that the amount of personal debt people were getting into was unsustainable, that mortgages were a necessary evil not a cause for rejoicing, that landlordry is morally questionable and tantamount to hoarding, never having spent on a credit card, and so on.
That's not because I fashion myself a Cassandra, but because I was brought up a methodist and while I will drink silly amounts and get up to all kinds of things Messers Wesley would frown upon, I've never really shaken it when it comes to money. I'd have said the same thing in just about any circumstances. But never the less, I avoided getting into debt, and so on, during that period.
So you can imagine how pissed off I get when politicians end a long list of folk responsible, -- usually as a part of the all-mucking in message --, starting with the real baddies and end with "and all of us too: taking out slightly too big a mortgage, spending slightly too much on the credit card". I'm not sure who the "you" they mean is, but it's not "me". I don't want a medal or anything, but don't start having a go at me, when all you did was have a go at me when I didn't spend, for being some kind of throwback!
But words are just words. Since then, I see the whole economy has been rearranged to stop the people who did take the risks from defaulting.
So, the thing I've learnt from this crisis about personal finance is that it's ok to be profligate if the folk in swing constituencies are: it's ok to spend money on things that will affect those people, and to get up to the fiddles and overcommitments as long as it's the right kind of floating-voter fiddles and overcommitments. In fact, when the time comes to the crunch time, you'll probably find that people who were cautious will be penalised if it helps those people.
So really, I guess I saw personal finance as being something which you did for yourself and your family, but I guess that's really just a myth. It's just a part of the same power system as everything else, and that's the best way to act -- treating it as a political rather than a financial activity.
In the early 2000s, I was very dubious about what was going on: it seemed that there wasn't any real growth, that the housing market seemed like a bubble, that the amount of personal debt people were getting into was unsustainable, that mortgages were a necessary evil not a cause for rejoicing, that landlordry is morally questionable and tantamount to hoarding, never having spent on a credit card, and so on.
That's not because I fashion myself a Cassandra, but because I was brought up a methodist and while I will drink silly amounts and get up to all kinds of things Messers Wesley would frown upon, I've never really shaken it when it comes to money. I'd have said the same thing in just about any circumstances. But never the less, I avoided getting into debt, and so on, during that period.
So you can imagine how pissed off I get when politicians end a long list of folk responsible, -- usually as a part of the all-mucking in message --, starting with the real baddies and end with "and all of us too: taking out slightly too big a mortgage, spending slightly too much on the credit card". I'm not sure who the "you" they mean is, but it's not "me". I don't want a medal or anything, but don't start having a go at me, when all you did was have a go at me when I didn't spend, for being some kind of throwback!
But words are just words. Since then, I see the whole economy has been rearranged to stop the people who did take the risks from defaulting.
So, the thing I've learnt from this crisis about personal finance is that it's ok to be profligate if the folk in swing constituencies are: it's ok to spend money on things that will affect those people, and to get up to the fiddles and overcommitments as long as it's the right kind of floating-voter fiddles and overcommitments. In fact, when the time comes to the crunch time, you'll probably find that people who were cautious will be penalised if it helps those people.
So really, I guess I saw personal finance as being something which you did for yourself and your family, but I guess that's really just a myth. It's just a part of the same power system as everything else, and that's the best way to act -- treating it as a political rather than a financial activity.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-10-05 03:12 pm (UTC)-- John Maynard Keynes, "The Consequences to the Banks of the Collapse in Money Values", 1931
(I hadn't realised that JMK was active around the time of the 30s depression. He must be inflating slowly in his grave at the current state of economics, which is also mostly a political rather than a scientific activity)