The Great Seduction - David Brooks

[madinmaryland]

Yes, that David Brooks. Takes time to slam the policies he has vigorously supported in the past.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/opinion/10brooks.html?ref=opinion

The people who created this country built a moral structure around money. The Puritan legacy inhibited luxury and self-indulgence. Benjamin Franklin spread a practical gospel that emphasized hard work, temperance and frugality. Millions of parents, preachers, newspaper editors and teachers expounded the message. The result was quite remarkable.

All Conversations » The United States has been an affluent nation since its founding. But the country was, by and large, not corrupted by wealth. For centuries, it remained industrious, ambitious and frugal.

Over the past 30 years, much of that has been shredded. The social norms and institutions that encouraged frugality and spending what you earn have been undermined. The institutions that encourage debt and living for the moment have been strengthened. The country’s moral guardians are forever looking for decadence out of Hollywood and reality TV. But the most rampant decadence today is financial decadence, the trampling of decent norms about how to use and harness money.

Sixty-two scholars have signed on to a report by the Institute for American Values and other think tanks called, “For a New Thrift: Confronting the Debt Culture,” examining the results of all this. This may be damning with faint praise, but it’s one of the most important think-tank reports you’ll read this year.

..snip

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. agree with everything except this crap at the end...

"The tax code should tax consumption, not income,..."

still pushing the unFair tax :eyes:

[madinmaryland]

2. Yeah. He talks about what a regressive tax the Lotteries are,

but still pushing that flat tax thing.

:shrug:

[Doctor_J]

3. Editorials by neocon Brooks and Fox News's Beckel on p1

When did this turn into "Winger Opinion Corner"?

[Puzzler]

4. Yeah, right!

Brooks writes:


"The United States has been an affluent nation since its founding. But the country was, by and large, not corrupted by wealth"


Has he conveniently forgotten the era of the "robber barons" a century ago? It wasn't until FDR's New Deal that things started to improve for the average American.

[EFerrari]

7. I know. How does he explain the Gilded Age?

:crazy:

[Miss Authoritiva]

5. Apparently, we're supposed to darn our socks out of the investment banking system collapse

Whenever I see an institute, here the Institute for American Values, featured prominently in an op/ed piece, I always look it up. This is their official http://www.americanvalues.org/html/institute_at_a_glance.html">website. It's all about Ward and June being committed to their marriage to the death and about Wally and the Beaver being thrifty with string and scrap metal and trying not to tear their good clothes . I didn't read too far, so I don't know what becomes of Lumpy and Eddie Haskell. I suspect that Lumpy dies of a particularly virulent strain of gonorrhea (his punishment for flouting established sexual mores) and Eddie Haskell dies in a flaming car crash. Eddie goes unmourned because of the unforgivable waste of fuel involved in his reckless death.

[lanlady]

6. his solutions are laughable

He wants churches and foundations to get into the short-term loan business. WTF??

Oh yeah, and let's enforce the usury laws, he says. Right, it'll sure make a difference to those college kids that their APR is a mere 28% instead of 32%.