It is a rare instance when I almost entirely agree with anything in the Big Culture-Big Media outlet The Atlantic. But recently they published this….

America’s Gambling Addiction Is Metastasizing:

“When life feels this precarious, it’s only natural to roll the dice on just about everything.” //

“The chief benefit is that there’s a lot of money to be made, for governments and businesses both. The primary cost is that many unlucky and vulnerable people are destroyed.

“American society has (now) accepted that trade-off—big money now for social crisis later—on any number of fronts: in its banking sector, in its housing markets, in its health-care industry. The rise of gambling is simply one example of our boundless desire for risk.” //

So why not gamble your money? It appears to be the only way you can actually accrue wealth. In a country whose institutions are actively destroying your money — and corruptly working with others to steal it.

The only flaw in the article? Its apparent attack on short-term bank loans to poor people.

Marche doesn’t specifically mention the utter corruption of the 2008 housing crisis, but it fits right in with the theme he’s developed.

That crisis was caused by Big Government and Big Banks colluding to steal money out of the home mortgage market by throwing trillions of dollars at poor people everyone knew couldn’t pay it back. //

Ninja loans are another name for NINA which stands for no income, no assets….”

This was Big Banks gambling trillions of dollars — of our money — on nigh guaranteed losers, with Big Government rigging the system — so the Big Banks’ wins were guaranteed, and its losses outsourced to US.

Big Banks paid themselves obscene fees on each awful loan they made. Until it destroyed the home mortgage market — and with it the global economy.

At which point Big Government left US to die — and gave the Big Banks trillions of our dollars. Which the Big Banks immediately used to give themselves huge bonuses as reward for royally screwing US.

The lesson that should have been gleaned from this mess is: If poor people with bad credit want to borrow money, the loan terms should reflect the risk posed.

Which this article bizarrely criticizes:

“…(C)redit lines with 23 percent APR….”

These are actually short-term loan rates. If you’re poor and out of money on Tuesday — they’ll loan you money until payday Friday.

It’s a credit line for poor people. Unlike the idiotic housing crisis loans – these have an interest rate that accurately reflects the risk of lending to poor people. It’s the marketplace — accurately reflecting the marketplace.

These loans — and the people who take them — have NOTHING AT ALL to do with our society’s descent into a gambling ethos culture.

These people aren’t borrowing this money to bet the ponies. They are borrowing it to fix their car so they can keep getting to work.

These loans are lifelines for the people who take them. And they are often the only lifelines they are offered. //

jeffs
an hour ago
Americans’ greater acceptance of — and penchant for
Fill in the blank with any moral degradation from divorce to abortion to shacking up to slothfulness to the alphabet soup agenda, et. al.

Breitbart was correct but forgot culture is downstream of faith and religion; the Christian faith. Churches, pastors, denominations are ultimately to blame for our current judgment. God has handed us over to our vices which will consume us.

This is why there is no political answer to the problems plaguing our Nation.