” Currently in America we are experiencing huge economic troubles which are obvious almost everywhere. Drive down any block in Akron and you’re bound to pass a handful of foreclosed houses, boarded up businesses and homeless asking for money on street corners.”
“

Currently in America we are experiencing huge economic troubles which are obvious almost everywhere. Drive down any block in Akron and you’re bound to pass a handful of foreclosed houses, boarded up businesses and homeless asking for money on street corners. Unemployment rates are rising month by month. This past week California reached over 10 percent unemployment. I would argue that the government is mainly to blame, but every single American in financial trouble can only look in the mirror if they wish to start blaming anyone.

Each and every one of us is responsible for our own actions. The Constitution provides us with the liberties to do and live as we wish as long as we aren’t interfering with anyone else’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We are all going to make good and bad choices, but we are always obligated to live up to the choices we’ve made.

For example, my editor asked me last week if I could write an article for this print. I replied to her and told her I would have her one by Monday afternoon. I made the decision to take the time to write and obligated myself to turn in an article to her. In a sense, I gave her my word that I would follow through with my part of the deal. Though I may miss out on going to the shooting range with my friends on Saturday afternoon, I am responsible for getting the job done.

Thankfully my parents taught me this concept of accountability because it seems that most in America have forgotten it. Looking at home foreclosures, for example, one can immediately argue that Freddie Mac and Fannie May are directly responsible, which they certainly are, but they are not the ones signing the loan agreements for houses they cannot afford. The homeowners are the ones who should have refrained from purchasing a home they couldn’t make payments. No one had a gun to their heads, no one lied to them. The facts were laid in front of them and they signed their names on the dotted line. That is an agreement that they were to be held accountable for, and that is the reason they were foreclosed on.

Private businesses are in the same boat. General Motors and Chrysler are prime examples of poor and damning decision making that killed them from the inside out. Both of these companies signed contracts with the intent that they were going to be fulfilled. The problem is that when these contracts were put in place, labor contracts especially, American car companies had no other competition to deal with. They had a stranglehold on the American market and so they were obliged to sign any contracts that came their way to keep the workers on the floor, because any down time meant less revenue. At the time, these decisions were overlooked, but as we can see now, they’ve had detrimental and deadly consequences.

Companies that have made these decisions should be made to stick by their contracts and fulfill them to the word, and if they cannot, then they should be cut loose from the market into bankruptcy. There is no second chance in free market economics. With the recent bailouts, first to the banking industry and then to both General Motors and Chrysler, all the government expressed is that now it doesn’t matter what kind of decisions a company makes as long as jobs aren’t lost. Go ahead, make all the risky loans that you want, you’re backed by the American tax payer and they don’t even know it.

It’s obvious that responsibility is no longer on the minds of anyone except those that are actually staying current on their bills. School districts, cities, and whole states are no longer looking at ways to fix their problems, rather they’re all asking for their own bailouts to cover up their blunders.

What are we teaching our children? What are they thinking when they see the entire nation begging for money because they can’t pay their bills? I can only hope that this is a brutal lesson that people should only be buying things that they have the cash for. Otherwise, we can only look forward to a welfare state in the future, totally dependent upon the government. But looking at the election, 53 percent of you voted for the redistribution of wealth, so maybe it’s inevitable anyway.

“