Financial obligation and logical consistency

 A debt incurred is a debt that must be paid.  Do you agree or disagree?  Be careful.  One of the most important, and more importantly, replicated observations in American politics is that people do not derive their beliefs from logical first principles.  Their policy positions are not "constrained," in the terminology of Philip Converse, on the basis of which observation he asserts that most people are not ideologues by any coherent definition of the word.  In his 1964 article, he did not use the term as an epithet, but rather, as a descriptor for those who connect their policy positions across issues based on some system, considering instead "ideologues" to be more politically sophisticated than those unable to see the connections between issues.  So now, consider the principle:  a debt incurred is a debt that must be paid.

Right now, attention in the political realm is returning to the debt ceiling and the tiresome yet reckless game of chicken that we must endure any time there is a Democratic president and GOP control of at least one chamber of Congress.  I will not bother, in this post, to recount why it is objectively stupid to have "a debt ceiling," nor why it is objectively stupid to refuse to raise the debt ceiling.  Instead, I will note a reasonably accurate rhetorical device used by Democrats during these times.  Financial obligations have already been incurred.  When Congress passes appropriations, that is a commitment to pay.  That act incurs a financial obligation.  As soon as those appropriations are passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president, we have an obligation to pay.  Moreover, there are "entitlement" agreements (Social Security and Medicare) which do not require year-to-year appropriations.  Because of the structure of the law, we have agreed to those financial obligations.  Bond holders have loaned us money.  We owe them money.

Must we pay them?  Yes or no?

Congress does a stupid thing.  Congress does many stupid things, but one in particular concerns me this morning.  Congress appropriates money to a certain level.  Congress gives the IRS the authority to tax at a level below that.  However, rather than giving the Treasury the authority to issue bonds to cover the difference at the same time, Congress waits until that difference hits a crisis point so that the country is forced to endure the threat of a financial default.

Those who hold the finances of the country hostage (known as "Republicans") use the following fallacious argument.  When you are in debt, do you keep spending and just ask for your credit card limits to go up?

The government is not a household, but here is a closer analogy.  You put a lot of expenditures on your credit cards.  So many, in fact, that once they are processed, they will exceed your credit card limits.  If those expenditures are processed before your credit limits go up, and you go over your limits, you are financially fucked.  You will face massive fines, you don't have the cash to cover the fines, your assets may be seized, your credit rating will get hit hard, which jacks up your interest rates, and generally speaking, you're fucked.

But...

and as we say, everything before the "but" is irrelevant.

You have one day.  If you call your credit cards that very day and ask for your credit limits to be raised to cover the stuff that you already put on the cards, they'll do it.  Remembering that you already charged that stuff.  Why will they raise your limits?  You always pay at least the minimum, and they make money on the interest they get out of you.

Would it be a good idea to change your spending?  If you're buying shit you don't need, then abso-fucking-lutely.  One way or another, you should probably do some re-evaluation of your future finances, but the question of whether or not you call your credit card companies has nothing to do with that.  That's about decisions you already made, and if you don't call those credit card companies, you are fucking yourself over.

Call them, dumbass.

And if you are a family, and your spouse says, "yes, I know we should call them, or we're fucked, but I'm going to hide the phone from you and demand that you do X before I give you the phone," your spouse is either stupid, vile or both.  Even if the demand is a demand to change your future spending.

You married the wrong person, and you should get a divorce.

That's where we are, far more analogously than someone contemplating a credit limit increase to buy more shit.

So I return to the statement.  An obligation incurred is an obligation that must be paid.

Agree?

Well, then.

What about student loans?

I did not give you that money.  I loaned you that money.  You signed papers agreeing to pay me back.  That is why you received very generous terms.  Are you obligated to repay me?

I am not asking whether S&P or Moody's will downgrade either America's credit rating, or yours should any particular political maneuver be made.  I am asking about the philosophical principles of debt and obligation.  If you are angry about GOP debt ceiling games, while cheering various plans to cancel student loan debt, "we" are not debating.  I am merely blathering on a blog that nobody reads.  If anyone ever bothered to read this, such a person could contort himself into knots trying to justify holding these obviously conflicting beliefs, but who are you trying to convince?  Me?  I neither know nor care what's in your head.  If you hold contradictory beliefs, tell Hegel to fuck off, and think coherently about the concepts of debt and obligation.

I return to the simple question.  When you agree to pay or repay money, what does that mean?  I see inconsistency.  Granted, inconsistency is nothing new nor extraordinary.  See:  Converse, Philip.  Yet I pose the following bit of minor advice.  You do not control others, but you can control your own logical consistency.  When you make an argument, ask yourself if that argument leads to a rejection of other beliefs you hold, or if you make the opposite argument in other circumstances.  You cannot stop others' hypocrisy, but you can clarify your own thinking.

Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit, "Payday," from Mirrors of Embarrassment.