because I had the background and opportunity - not to mention, luck of the Irish - to prepare for it, that's not the case with many people. I grew up in a family and era where the least wastefulness was abhorrent. Didn't matter how much you had or could expect to get - don't waste a penny of it. I'm trying to say I didn't build this alone and I know it.
But a lot of people who grew up in cushier circumstances were never taught the lessons I learned from early childhood. Unfortunate as that may be, it does not excuse their victimization by financial sharpies either. The danger of falling on hard times is less likely to encourage thrift in those to whom it's an alien concept.
Then there are the desperately poor who were born into abject poverty and PERHAPS have no model of long range planning in their world. Everything might be only now, now, now if you don't expect to live past 30 or ever to get a real chance at sustainable security. Some lucky few might manage to extricate themselves with help, but the odds are against them and I WON'T blame those who wind up ground beneath vulture capitalism's massive wheel. Those whom hunger stalks can't be expected to save for the future!
I'll never forget watching a major Florida developer caught on the wrong end of the boom-bust cycle explain how one day he'd been fabulously wealthy, on paper at least, and the next day busted back to nothing. If he was smart enough to do what he did, he should've had sense enough not to overextend himself like that. But he wasn't and he didn't. Rampant greed blinded him. He said as much.
And the unfortunates snookered into mortgages they couldn't afford, whether their own or as faulty bulk investments, I feel for them too. Might doesn't make right, and I abhor those who took such advantage of easy marks. But then that's the very nature of capitalism.
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