I went to high school with the most argumentative kids I've ever met. The student population was about 95 percent Democrat, but the Libertarians and Republicans could hold their own in any debate and believe me, there were many debates. A day wouldn't pass without people arguing in the hallway about Sarah Palin's viability as a vice presidential candidate, which inevitably led to a loud, general condemnation of the Bush years and a spin-off argument about whether the war in Iraq was justified.
Everyone has an opinion, and no one's opinion is ever simple. How could it be? Complicated questions don't have easy answers.
So why do we talk about the recession like it's a black-and-white issue? America, apparently, is not a nation that tolerates flip-flopping. We want clear stances and clear solutions.
Exhibit W(affle): John Kerry. What a throwback. Yes, reneging on one's word all the time is hardly admirable, but someone who changes his or her opinion after careful consideration shouldn't be automatically labeled as weak-minded or lacking character. A mind that never wavers is either supremely uncurious or dangerously overconfident.
And yet economic issues are monochromatic to so many of us. Main Street versus Wall Street. The 1 percent versus the 99 percent. The bankers versus the lenders. These dichotomies are clearly not the full story.
Think back to 2008, when pundits and talk show hosts were touting Main Street as the backbone of America and trashing the bankers and agencies that work in the financial sector. But Wall Street doesn't just rely on big business to survive. If every individual in America decided to start hiding his money under his mattress instead of investing, what do you think would happen? (Hint: See "1929.") And if the entrepreneurs and homeowners on Main Street couldn't get startup loans and down payments from banks, a huge sector of American business would come to a grinding halt.
Remember all the talk about predatory bankers and helpless lenders? Bankers are not totally to blame for doling out questionable loans that were packaged into the shaky, now-infamous mortgage-backed securities. Yes, some lending officers fudged loan applications to hurry the process along and increase profits from the resale of securitized loans. Others "forgot" to explain to wannabe homeowners exactly what kind of financial debt they were shouldering. Yes, many people lost their jobs and were no longer able to make the monthly payments that previously had posed no difficulty.
But there are also those who made terrible economic choices, the ones who spent and still spend more than they earn and found themselves so deep in debt that they lost their possessions and homes. The huge role that the banking industry played in creating the conditions for the recession cannot be ignored, but sometimes we forget that ordinary people made irresponsible decisions, too.
Flash forward three years and we're still categorizing people, this time into the 1 percent and the 99 percent. Who is able to participate in the Occupy Wall Street rallies? The people flooding the streets and bathing in Burger Kings are college students, the unemployed and those with the luxury to be able to miss stretches of work without being fired. Ironically, people who are actually struggling to make ends meet the actual 99 percent probably don't have time to skip work or sleep in the cold for fear of their deficient health insurance catching up to them.
Obviously, there is an income gap in this country. The top 1 percent of Americans own 40 percent of the wealth, according to a recent Vanity Fair piece by economist Joseph Stiglitz. But there is always a flip side. The top 1 percent of Americans also pay 36.7 percent of the nation's annual tax revenue, according to the Tax Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that collects data and publishes research on state and federal income taxes. This tax revenue in part pays for welfare programs such as Medicare and Social Security.
It's understandably easy to fall into thinking that the privileged are exploiting the poor and that someone should pull some Robin Hood trick and restore balance to America. It makes sense that people want some kind of justice, to see the executives at the top of the food chain suffer as much as ordinary citizens. When CEOs are accepting multimillion-dollar bonuses and papers are running stories about families of seven living on the streets, it's hard not to get angry and blame the "establishment," a system that has failed innocent people pursuing the American dream. It's their fault, we say, those fat cats in their tuxedos swilling martinis, the Jack Donaghys of the world.
The system, the bankers, Wall Street, Main Street there is no group that is solely to blame for the recession. It doesn't matter if you own a candy store in a tiny town or run a hedge fund the recession has affected almost everyone. The guys who owned the camera store down the street from my house lost their shop after over 20 years of business. My family is by no means struggling from paycheck to paycheck, but my parents lost two-thirds of their savings the year before they had to send me to college.
Everyone is hurting. Maybe that's why I was initially so skeptical of movements like Occupy Wall Street that keep dividing people into "us" versus "them," when the real source of the current recession can't be boiled down into any one category.
The conversation must shift away from guilt, fault and blame. Instead, we need to examine how everyone individuals, policymakers, businessmen could foster responsible economic growth. Income inequality is a very real problem in this country, and no representatives from the banking industry have truly been held accountable for their role in the financial crisis. But we're getting nowhere with finger-pointing and name-calling. As far as I'm concerned, even a handful of lukewarm potential solutions would be better than continuing the conversation like we're starting a war.
