Bail-out protests
The so-called New Tea Party protests seem to be spreading, at least for the moment, with demonstrations occurring or planned in cities around the country. Reporter Rick Santelli has become famous overnight for his outburst on CNBC, asking who wants to pay his neighbor's mortgage when the neighbor lives in a bigger house than you do? Renters want to know why, as their tax money goes to help in-trouble homeowners keep homes they couldn't afford, those who rent get no help at all. People who live in some cold, grimy factory town in the upper Midwest wonder why they should be asked to bail out the irresponsible profligate spenders enjoying the sunshine in California, Florida, or Arizona. Others ask by what right those who were irresponsible in this generation should be allowed to saddle everyone's children and grandchildren with a massive overburden of debt.
Some are thinking of specific protest actions of other, quieter sorts, such as starving the beast by investing only in municipal bonds, so as to minimize or eliminate taxable income. Or this sort of thing, which appeared in the Comments of a website:
Cutting off your nose to spite your face? Probably. But Obama's refrain that "we're all in this together" is not going to cut it with people who played by the rules and did nothing to contribute to this mess, and who now see others who gamed the system being rewarded at their expense. "We're all in it together" appeals to the principle of equality, but the idea that equality is synonymous with justice is badly mistaken. Equality that is not earned is unjust. What is at issue here, contrary to Obama's pieties, is not equality; what's at issue is equity.
The principle of equity -- that a person's outcomes should be proportional to his inputs -- is very deeply and widely held, including by people who have no good idea how to state it with any precision, but who feel it nevertheless. It's why socialist experiments fail, as the energetic and productive find themselves earning no more than the slackers, and so to achieve equity slacken their own efforts. Inequity is felt at a visceral level; the person who benefits from it feels it as guilt, while the exploited person feels it as anger. The principle of equity lies behind every notion of justice and fairness from an-eye-for-an-eye forward, and it is the ethical ground that informs and conditions public debates across the spectrum, from executive compensation to welfare fraud to capital punishment.
The sense of justice is about as elemental and primal as it gets, and so are the emotions that injustice evokes. What will be the predominant public reaction to a GM-UAW bailout, satisfaction and relief, or anger and outrage? My money goes on the latter. The market delivers a kind of rough justice, but Obama and his team are out to make sure that doesn't happen. They are playing with fire, I think, and my guess is that all hopes about overcoming public resistance with soaring rhetorical appeals are already DOA. People know injustice when they see it; they feel it in their bones, and they will not be talked out of it.
Byron
Some are thinking of specific protest actions of other, quieter sorts, such as starving the beast by investing only in municipal bonds, so as to minimize or eliminate taxable income. Or this sort of thing, which appeared in the Comments of a website:
"You want to make a protest that is more than symbolic? Want to send a message that goes straight to the heart of what pisses us all off about this bailout?
"Start making all of your mortgage payments 15 days late. Federal law imposes a grace period of 15 days, and forbids the imposition of late fees or credit reporting on late payments that are made within the grace period. There is no penalty, but if 1 million people did this with an average $1000 mortgage payment, that is like pulling a billion dollars out of the system.
"To really twist the knife, withdraw permanently $1000 from your checking, savings, or brokerage account. Keep it at home in cash, or buy an ounce of gold with it and hold on to that. Now those "late" mortgage payments are not offset by the cash sitting in an account, they are pulled out of the system altogether.
"That will not be ignored. Its your money they are screwing with, let them know how it feels when enough people decide to take their ball and go home."
Cutting off your nose to spite your face? Probably. But Obama's refrain that "we're all in this together" is not going to cut it with people who played by the rules and did nothing to contribute to this mess, and who now see others who gamed the system being rewarded at their expense. "We're all in it together" appeals to the principle of equality, but the idea that equality is synonymous with justice is badly mistaken. Equality that is not earned is unjust. What is at issue here, contrary to Obama's pieties, is not equality; what's at issue is equity.
The principle of equity -- that a person's outcomes should be proportional to his inputs -- is very deeply and widely held, including by people who have no good idea how to state it with any precision, but who feel it nevertheless. It's why socialist experiments fail, as the energetic and productive find themselves earning no more than the slackers, and so to achieve equity slacken their own efforts. Inequity is felt at a visceral level; the person who benefits from it feels it as guilt, while the exploited person feels it as anger. The principle of equity lies behind every notion of justice and fairness from an-eye-for-an-eye forward, and it is the ethical ground that informs and conditions public debates across the spectrum, from executive compensation to welfare fraud to capital punishment.
The sense of justice is about as elemental and primal as it gets, and so are the emotions that injustice evokes. What will be the predominant public reaction to a GM-UAW bailout, satisfaction and relief, or anger and outrage? My money goes on the latter. The market delivers a kind of rough justice, but Obama and his team are out to make sure that doesn't happen. They are playing with fire, I think, and my guess is that all hopes about overcoming public resistance with soaring rhetorical appeals are already DOA. People know injustice when they see it; they feel it in their bones, and they will not be talked out of it.
Byron
posted by Byron | Sunday, February 22, 2009
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