I’m glad you’re conflicted over the bailout legislation that failed yesterday. I’m conflicted, too. As a 26-year-old engineer, I know I’m not among the millions of Americans most at risk from a market crash. If I lose everything in my 401k, it really won’t be that bad compared to the losses that my 65-year-old colleague would experience. And I really do care about the retirement investments of all those Boomers that will really suffer if the market crashes.

That said, I still can’t fathom spending $700 billion of my and my fellow Americans’ tax revenues to finance the bailout of the financial industry. Yes, if we allow the big financial companies to fail it will hurt normal Americans who invested in the stock market—but there will be appropriate consequences for the CFOs and traders and slice-and-dice commodity managers who made all these bad financial decisions in the first place. In contrast, a bailout package hands all those investors a “get out of jail free” card for all that bad debt. If we’re bailing out all these banks, what example does that set for the homeowners just barely making their mortgage payments—or who aren’t making them? A bailout package says that we as a society don’t value thrift and caution in finance—if you make bad bets, the government will come bail you out. That’s not the kind of lesson we should be teaching investors, big or small.

The best way to prevent current and future disasters is to incentivize good behavior. Please make sure Congress does so, and makes Wall Street start setting a good example for Main Street.

Update @ 11:34 Apparently the “Write to Your Congressman” website is broken, so this didn’t actually get sent yet. I’ll try again after lunch, I guess. Update @ 16:43 Still down. screencapture for posterity