Analysis for Critical Thinkers

If you would like to make an interesting observation about the way that people think, here is something you can do the next time you hear them talking about current events. Whenever they say the “the government”, imagine them saying the words “someone else” instead. The simple substitution may not necessarily show you the quality of person that they are, but it will certainly show you how they view personal responsibility and the role of government.

“The government should give me free health care.”
“The government should make sure that I don’t lose my house through foreclosure.”
“What is the government going to do for me?”
“I think that the government should pay for my abortion.”
“I think that the government should bail out my business.”
“It’s about time that the government send me a stimulus check.”
“How am I supposed to pay my bills? The government should do something about my increasing debt.”

It is no wonder that young voters that represent the “Me Generation” are said to be big supporters of President Obama. The “Me” people are those that believe that the self comes first. They are characteristically of the view that the world owes them and that things that happen to them are somebody else’s fault. They prefer to be dependent rather than independent. Their upbringing and schooling is perhaps the cause of their view that government exists to serve them. When you substitute “someone else” for “the government” as we did above, their position becomes even clearer.

This is not to place any value judgement on them or to argue that their world-view is inferior to mine although it is certainly different. It is merely mentioned here as a possible explanation for the current state of affairs in this country today. Authors, speakers, commentators, scholars, historians and pundits often present what I consider to be clear and convincing arguments about why freedom, independence, and free-market capitalism were what made this country great and are lacking today. But people like those in the “Me Generation” are not interested in this type of logic and analysis, valid as it may be. It runs as opposite to their nature and upbringing as their arguments are to mine.

Logic and reason – or at least my view of it – have no effect on those who have been conditioned so long to believe otherwise. Dependency of the “Me” people will lose to freedom, independence and personal responsibility not by better arguments but simply by larger numbers of voters.

An astute reader reports that every time President Obama makes a speech about his plans to have Big Government “save” the economy, the Dow Jones Industrial Average takes a nose dive. The stock market starts to drop, the reader states, even before the speech is over. There have been many articles written about how the President can “talk down” the economy. There is apparently much evidence to support this notion.

Now, you can argue that the nose dive is just coincidence – or float the idea that it would have been much worse without the President’s actions –  but it does lead one to some thoughtful analysis. If this is in fact true, why would it be true?

Look at your own personal budget. Look at the budget of your business. When you are running short on cash, would you ever think that the solution is to simply spend, spend, spend record amounts of money that you do not even have on investments that you know to be failing? I would suggest that responsible businesses and individuals would more likely try to find ways to save, economize and restructure while spending less.

Now imagine that you – as a responsible business or individual – heard that through a new law, you are being forced into making bad investments. You will now be required to pay for what you consider to be a bad idea. During your own times of economic hardship, you are now being forced by the Federal Government to pay for businesses less successful than your own or risk not only legal penalties, but being called greedy as well.

If it is a fact that the stock market drops every time the President makes a speech, perhaps this is part of the reason. In any case, is there much surprise that investors in businesses, demonized for being successful, are skittish when they hear about how they will be forced to spend their money?