Shorter Consumerist: “Evil conservatives are making people live up to the contacts they signed.”

There’s only so much the administration can do to bail out people who took out loans that were more than they could afford. If we bail them out completely, that’s sending the wrong message: “Don’t worry about whether you can afford this loan in a few years. Don’t worry about putting something away in case of emergency. Don’t worry — just spend without thinking. If you get into trouble, Big Brother will come and help.”

Encouraging government help into people’s lives is encouraging government interference into people’s lives. Relying on Big Brother to bail you out every time you have a problem is the same as inviting Big Brother to come and make sure you never take a risk that could result in extra expenses for him. If the government has to bail us out every time we find that our decisions have put us in a bad place, it won’t be long until the government dictates every single aspect of our lives.

I do feel sorry for those who signed a mortgage that they could nominally afford and who then found that, due to some unforeseen event or another, found that they really couldn’t afford it. Bad things happen and that sucks, but we need to take that into account when making decisions, especially decisions as big as buying a home.