Personal finance IS politics

A few days ago, JD posted posted a request at Get Rich Slowly as he was coping with the unexpected passing of a dear friend:

Finally, please stop sending me anti-Obama links. I’m not going to post them. I don’t post pro-Obama links, either. Nor did I post links in opposition to or in favor of President Bush.  Get Rich Slowly is not a political blog, and it’s not about to become one. The political divisiveness in the U.S. makes me tense, and I refuse to contribute to it.

This elicited some conversation, among which was a comment from Steve of Brip Blap:

I hear what you’re saying, and I wouldn’t want to see you start launching into political polemics on GRS…but unfortunately politics have a huge impact on personal finances (taxes, retirement savings laws, and on and on). The divisiveness is there for a reason – politicians have drastically different ideas about how we should be able to handle our own money.

So I understand completely where you’re coming from in regards to the blog – no sense in going there – but it’s a huge part of what’s going to happen with our money in the future. We will all need to contribute to whichever side we think is right.

I have to agree with Steve: although I wouldn’t ask JD (or anyone else) to hold forth on topics that make him uncomfortable, the fact is that politics and personal finance are so tightly intertwined, there’s no separating them. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that personal finance and politics are aspects of the same thing.

We are all suffering today because a decade ago (much longer, really, looking back to the Reagan years) we elected a party whose dogma was largely based on some misguided theories. Among these was the idea that the market will keep itself healthy and on track if left to its own accord. This theory has given us unbridled greed and irresponsibility, eleven million people out of work, depressed salaries for those of us who have managed to hold onto our jobs, a plague of foreclosures that is casting millions of Americans out of their homes, astronomical gas price spikes, a failing healthcare system, collapsing banks, and the prospect of another Great Depression. The fix for this mess will saddle our kids and our grandkids with national debt, high taxes, and a lowered standard of living, and you can be sure the politics that will come out of that circumstance will be interesting, indeed.

Bill Clinton’s byword, “It’s the economy, stupid,” put this fact in a nutshell: politics and money are the same thing. Free-market economics is a political theory every bit as much as it is an economic theory, and it was imposed, in an extreme form, on our nation through the workings of politics.

That’s why it’s so urgently important for Americans to be well educated in the history of their country and in the history of the world: votes made in ignorance lead to disaster, such as the one we’re seeing today. It’s why we need a free press, and why the collapse of the Fourth Estate poses an enormous threat to America’s republic. We need to understand the workings of our government’s leadership, and the easiest way to spread that understanding to the largest number of people is through a free press that focuses on something other than celebrity antics.

And it’s why as Americans we need to return to honest, forthright discussion and quit sniping at each other. The bitter conflicts, the nasty behavior, the substitution of crass rudeness for “debate” that have been fomented in certain quarters for the purpose of putting a specific party in the dominant position it has held for the past decade need to come to an end. If we are to escape the quicksand that’s fast sucking us to our economic doom, we must work together in a political and a politick way to make things as right as we can make them.

Funny about Money will continue to refer to political topics, and incivility will not be tolerated here. I make no secret of my opinion of the Bush Administration and its controllers. And I respect the right of others to disagree: politely.