And that's all I have to say about that...

"If we want a smarter government, we need a smarter populace, but few will draw the right lessons from the current disaster." 

From the Imaginary Politics blog, clearly channeling F.A. Hayek...

Comments

[aje]

That's a great quote - do you have a page number? Which chapter is it?

[Ben]

My huge apologies - in my haste I screwed up the attribution, which is now corrected in the post. The quote is from the Imaginary Politics blog (see link in post) with a HT to Russ Roberts at Cafe Hayek - which is how I came to read it.

[Ariel Spalletti]

This may look off topic in this post, but certainly is underlined with recent posts and comments.

I am so tired about reading what the government and regulators need to do to help fix our economy. Who should we bail out first? Troubled home owners? The automakers? People with too much credit card debt?

If you put a drunk through detox and then let them back on the street, they are going to go get drunk again. If you help a troubled home owner who can’t manage their fincances, an auto company that builds cars that just aren’t competitive with the imports (based on features and reliability), or a person who is a shopoholic - they are just going to find themselves in the same predicament again. Our society doesn’t need a bailout, we need a behavior change across the board. We need to learn what it means to save and to work hard and to balance our budgets. Government can set an example by doing that themselves first.

It just frustrates me to see how everyone is looking at somebody else to fix the issue when each one of us should be looking at ourselves and deciding to change our own behavior so we don’t ever find ourselves in homes we can’t afford and buying things on credit cards we can’t pay back. If you haven’t ever made a budget and started saving - now is the time.