Hispanic Enterprise - February/March 2008 - (Page 48)

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT BAILOUTS SEND THE WRONG MESSAGE TO THOSE ALREADY UNWILLING TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR SITUATION. By Ruben Navarrette, Jr. THE RESCUE GENERATION jobs they took for granted. They blame government, or the political parties, or the public schools. In fact, the only people that they never get around to blaming are themselves. The key to getting a good night’s sleep even when you’re not getting ahead is to not take responsibility for past mistakes, bad decisions or missed opportunities. Dropped out of high school? No worries. Never ﬁnished college? Not a problem. Lost the job because you wouldn’t leave your beloved hometown? Totally understandable. Besides, you know whose fault it is? It’s foreign workers. It’s government. It’s immigrants who keep wages low. A generation ago, they might have said: “It’s the system.” And everyone knows, you can’t ﬁght the system. So, you call for protection—from trade, from immigrants, from competition, from the world. And sooner or later, a shameless politician hungry for votes will show up and offer it. That’s where the enabling comes in. Sometimes it takes the form of a giveaway intended to win favor and buy t’s one of the greatest threats facing the United States of America, and yet you don’t hear much about it. It could devastate the U.S. economy and reverse the American trajectory so that future generations fall short of the standard of living enjoyed by their parents. It touches on just about every domestic policy issue, from immigration reform to the mortgage crisis to improving education to saving Social Security. Yet, our leaders—instead of tackling the problem—enable it by doing the wrong things and sending the wrong messages. I’m talking about the sense of entitlement that many Americans carry around—about what they think they deserve and the kind of life they should be living. They’re so sure of what should come their way that if things don’t go according to their plan, they waste no time in blaming someone or something else. Americans blame illegal immigrants for taking jobs that Americans aren’t interested in doing. They blame engineers from India and computer programmers from China for making them compete for 48 I votes. Other times, it’s a free pass that tells people they don’t have to be accountable for bad decisions or reckless behavior. You’ll ﬁnd both in the mortgage crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people bought homes they couldn’t afford from greedy and unscrupulous lenders who lent money to people who never should have qualiﬁed for loans. But, miraculously, they did. The catch? Scams like interest-only loans and adjustable rate mortgages—ticking time bombs that were bound to go off. And they did. Interest rates jumped. Monthly payments increased by as much as 50 percent. And a lot of people lost their home. Many just packed up their things and walked away. Never mind that they signed a contract. So what is government’s response? President Bush called for a freeze of interest rates on sub-prime loans. Two Democrats who want his job went even further. Hillary Clinton proposed a moratorium on foreclosures for 90 days and a freezing of interest rates for ﬁve years. Barack Obama said he would establish a $10 billion “home foreclosure prevention HISPANIC ENTERPRISE February/March 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Hispanic Enterprise - February/March 2008

Hispanic Enterprise - February/March 2008 Contents Briefcase: BIZBUZZ: Business Briefs Briefcase: Trendsetters Briefcase: BIZTECH: Virtually Meeting BizLife: Travel: Madrid's New Attraction Q & A: Mi Case es su Casa Hispanic Commerce: The Agenda Cover Story: The Top 50 Corporations for Supplier Diversity Technology: Hispanic Web 2.0 Success & Motivation: Sweetening the Deal Politics & Government: The Rescue Generation Managing: The Method Franchising: The Hispanic Face of Franchising Chamber Focus: It's Showtime Movers & Shakers: Open for Business Finance & Investing: Getting Your 401(K) on Target

Hispanic Enterprise - February/March 2008

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