One of the more talked about news items in the past day has been in regards to new polling data indicating a record number of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. (New York Times link.)
When looking through the NYT article, I the following point caught my eye:
The poll found that Americans blame government officials for the crisis more than banks or home buyers and other borrowers. Forty percent of respondents said regulators were mostly to blame, while 28 percent named lenders and 14 percent named borrowers.
I’ve joked about the SEP (Someone Else’s Problem) field being in full force at the lame-duck White House. However SEP seems to be contagious.
Whatever happened to the idea that the people who make mistakes should be deemed principally responsible for their actions?
True, there are many tragic stories in the credit crunch where people find themselves in trouble for reasons beyond (or mostly beyond) their control. However, there are also many, many tragic stories because people made bad decisions, or gambled and lost.
Is more regulation really the answer?
Personally, I think the Creator gave us brains for a reason. Maybe the finger of blame could be pointed at an educational system that apparently doesn’t do a good enough job educating people in fiscal realities. But the apparently prevailing attitude of seeking government regulators to come and protect us from ourselves is oddly disturbing.
Are we becoming “America, Land of the Sheeple”?