© 2008 by Michael Swickard, Ph.D.
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” – Joseph P. Kennedy
We, as a nation and individually, are in for tough times. There are two types of people in
Even when times are easy, some people back into a light pole, get fired from a job or someone they love leaves them. These are momentarily personal setbacks. But when the going really gets tough, we must hunker down to wait for better times and use our personal resources carefully.
When outlaw Bill Longley was hung, they marched him up the 13 steps of the gallows and asked if he had something to say. He said, “I see a whole lot of enemies and mighty few friends.”
Exactly! Our friends are few and our enemies plentiful. Our friends were the people who provided capital investments so our nation could expand the economy and we all could become richer. They no longer offer us capital.
Congressional and presidential scoundrels caused this crisis through bad government policies that resulted in risk and loss on a scale we cannot fathom. They now want to guide us out of the troubled waters they tossed us into. Will the medicine be worse than the illness?
We must rely more on ourselves
What should we do? According to Papa Joe Kennedy, we individually must get tough. How? First and foremost, each of us must lose the notion that the government will take care of us. The government “taking care of us” is what caused this problem.
We must start in small ways and large to rely more on ourselves and lose the concept of cradle-to-grave government care and entitlement. We are only entitled to a fair chance at what we want, not what we want. The distinction is lost on most people. When we want our brother’s wealth under the guise of “fairness,” we are on the road to destruction.
Someone always has more money; someone always has less. It is the hallmark of a capitalistic society. Some get up early and work late. Some do not want to work as hard. Importantly, some with huge incomes are branded rich though they have not two nickels to rub together since they are deeply in debt, while others who have little income are not at all in debt.
Class distinctions are socialist in nature and disruptive to capitalism. Our poverty rate has remained constant despite incredible infusions of taxpayer money over 40 years. To label people who have a car, house, cable and cell phones as in poverty is harmful. What they have is less than others, a socialist concept, but they do not miss meals or sleep in the rain.
The political solution was to make people who did not have much money believe that because they were poor, the society owed them something, namely, a loan for a house they cannot afford. Predicatively, that group of borrowers could not afford the houses and stopped paying on an incredible scale.
When I was a kid
As I was growing up we did not have that class-warfare notion of poverty. As far as I was concerned, I was not in poverty. I knew we just did not have much money. But we were not “the poor” since we always had food on the table and a roof over our heads.
My family did not have much money because my father, a sergeant in the military, was not paid much. It was great when I got my back-to-school shoes each year. My one pair of Keds sneakers had to last the entire year and was bought with lots of room for my toes to grow.
My older brother got the shirts and pants first. I got them a couple years later when he outgrew them and I grew into them. They always showed signs of mending. If they got ripped, we did not throw them away; my mother sewed the rip and said, “There, good as new.”
I say these things not to evoke pity. I was more than fine; it was a good life growing up. I was entertained by reading and all of us sitting and talking. We had games to play and chores to do. We did not have television.
What? No television? How did you ever survive?
Quite well, thank you. Especially I survived without the external push of wanting more than we could afford. I am 58 years old, this happened in the 1950s. It happened to many people and they also benefited.
Would I have liked my parents to have had more money? Of course. However, when I wanted spending money, my parents allowed me to earn that money by having a paper route, doing yard work and snow shoveling in the neighborhood. I did not stand around waiting for a handout; I was allowed to make the money I wanted. I worked hard, so I spent the money sparingly.
What did growing up in lean times really teach me? Spend only what you must. Make things last. When the going gets tough; hunker down and spend carefully. That should be the message today.
Each of us must, without fail, get tough for our own good.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.