‘Make Responsibility Matter Again’: Investor David Bahnsen On Economic Victimhood, Blame-Casting, And Moral Reformation

The first part of President Joe Biden’s tenure in the White House has been marked by high price levels, supply chain issues, and widespread labor shortages. Yet the economic headaches of the past two years are, in many ways, the fruit of societal issues that have gripped the United States for several decades.

David Bahnsen is the founder of The Bahnsen Group — a Manhattan-based wealth management firm that oversees $3.5 billion in client assets — and has been recognized as a top financial adviser by Barron’s, Forbes, and the Financial Times. In an interview with The Daily Wire, Bahnsen discussed the ways in which American societal decay has produced countless economic problems — and how Americans can reclaim their rich economic heritage by embracing personal responsibility.

‘Our Cultural Woes Are Abundant’

Before diagnosing the nation’s economic ailments, Bahnsen — the son of influential Presbyterian professor and apologist Greg Bahnsen — pointed to America’s religious heritage as the foundation for the country’s singular prosperity.

“The Puritan DNA that settled many American colonies was uniquely Protestant, profit-driven, work-focused, and consequently, productive,” he explained. “The entire genesis of the American experiment even outside of the Puritan dynamic was a byproduct of the unique synthesis that aspiration for religious freedom and economic opportunity represented. The religious foundations of America were not only of a certain theological heritage, but were factionally biased toward cultural engagement and a pioneering spirit.”

“I do believe there is a rich theological heritage that explains much of this, but I also believe embedded in the DNA of those who would jump on ships to sail the Atlantic to settle the ‘New World’ was a fundamentally risk-taking spirit that values the ethos of enterprise,” he continued.

Bahnsen said that a lack of economic responsibility has since permeated through American culture due to “the explicit secularism of the 1960s,” which was “rooted in a philosophy that rejected the moral foundation of work as much as it rejected traditional sexual morality.”

“In other words, the sexual revolution also had profound economic implications, and resulted in a demographic disaster as single men became less and less committed to the traditional expectations society had placed on them.”

Among other books, Bahnsen wrote “Crisis of Responsibility: Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and How You Can Cure It.” He contends that the answer to the problems plaguing the American economy is for “moral people to make responsibility matter again by renewing personal virtue and by forming lasting, mediating institutions that will trump the elitist bogeymen and scapegoats for generations to come.”

Bahnsen remarked that a plethora of worrying economic facts and figures makes his thesis “hard to escape.”

“Skyrocketing disability claims. A lower labor participation force. A greater acceptance of the ‘haves’ needing to support the ‘have nots.’ Systemic envy in higher education. The mother of them all — the financial crisis of 2008 wherein millions of able-bodied people walked away from their mortgage responsibility despite having the means to pay merely because the value of the home had declined,” Bahnsen described. “The follow-up to this: millions of people taking PPP loans who experienced no economic hardship from COVID at all.”

“Our cultural woes are abundant to see, and economic woes are the subsequent act.”

‘A Debt-Deflation Spiral’

Bahnsen contended that the United States is experiencing Japanification, which he described as “a national economic negative feedback loop that played out in Japan the last thirty years, and has its roots in excessive indebtedness.”

“Japanification is the term I use to describe a debt-deflation spiral, whereby weak economic growth begets fiscal and monetary policies that create further downward pressure on economic growth, which drives further policy response, which drives further economic challenge, rinse and repeat,” he said. “America is in a similar process now, but gratefully with less speed and severity thus far thanks to superior demographic and entrepreneurial conditions.”

Meanwhile, Bahnsen noted that the phenomenon occurs as both sides of the political aisle engage in unique forms of “blame-casting” over economic and political hardships. 

“The Left may lean more into how some factor of race, class, or gender rationalizes irresponsibility. And the Right may lean more into how the government caused a certain problem, or a trade deal, or a bad school system,” he observed. “But in both cases, there are culprits assigned to explain away individual responsibility.”

‘An Individual Obsession With Individual Responsibility’

The solution to American economic problems, according to Bahnsen, is “an individual obsession with individual responsibility that is a byproduct of spiritual and moral renewal.”

“I want a greater focus on responsibility because I believe human beings were created with dignity, and deserve the fuller life that not living in a state of victimhood represents,” he said. “I want people to not form their political worldview by who they most dislike, and instead form positive truth claims that are in line with their worldview.”

“The damage to society if this ethos is not rediscovered is unfathomable.” 

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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