FromDC2Iowa: Don't Buy Stuff

March 6, 2009, 7:45 a.m.

The Sure-Fire Solution to Economic Pain
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com* -- and Saturday Night Live, see below)
My Dad told the story of a Kansas farmer who was asked whether he believed in baptism. "Why of course I do," he said, "I've seen it done."

That's kind of how I am about credit. I've seen it done. And all about me I'm now watching the consequences of its having been done. And that's why I really don't believe in credit.

Mason Williams (the composer of "Classical Gas" and one-time head writer for the "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour") once wrote the story of the automobiles in his life, which he called his "Auto-biography."

In a similar spirit here is how I would describe my own "Auto-biography" of Nicholas Johnson.

My first car was a 20-year-old Model A Ford I bought from a local farmer for $25.

I paid cash.

My second car required saving money for a year as a college student. It was a much fancier Model A, with four doors and a roof, and therefore cost $75.

I paid cash.

Over the years the cars got grander and more expensive. A two-door Chevy ($700), a Volvo ($600), and a couple others along the way.

I paid cash.

My current vehicle is a 1978 VW camper van, one of my most expensive ever at $2000.

But I still paid cash.

Is this because I'm wealthy? No; quite the opposite. When offered job choices I've never simply picked the one that paid the most. I've chosen the ones that would offer the most interesting new experience, the most fun, or the greatest opportunity for public service -- one of which was serving on the local school board, a job I once described as providing "no money, but at least you get a lot of grief."

(Don't get me wrong, this is not a "pitty poor me" blog entry. I've been blessed at every turn in a life that could not have been better: my parents, growing up in Iowa City, the University's schools, from the two-year-old group at the Iowa Child Welfare Station on through University High School, a top flight public university undergraduate and law school education when tuition was $50 and a couple part-time jobs plus managing an apartment house were enough to get you by (compared with today's near-$50 thousand at private colleges, with the accompanying student loan debt), the lucky accidents of the U.S. Court of Appeals and Supreme Court clerkships, and three presidential appointments, and being able to return in my later years to my home town, live in the house where I grew up (on which the mortgage has long since been paid -- if indeed it was not purchased for cash), and welcomed into the UI College of Law, a three-block walk from home, where I live with a former high school classmate who is, for me, the perfect wife -- in addition to our wonderful children, grandchildren and now great-grandchildren. No; all I am saying is that I have, by choice, purchased cars for which I could afford to pay cash, rather than paying interest to a bank on a newer, more expensive one.)

No; I've paid cash because, in attempting to control living costs, the elimination of interest payments always seemed to me to involve the greatest returns for the least effort -- with the least pain.

I don't confess this as a badge of honor. I'm fully aware most Americans will ridicule my choices and think me a fool.

I merely mention it to give you some insight as to why I might be questioning the behavior and choices of those who propelled us into this global economic collapse -- and who now propose that the way out of the pit we're in is to go back to making more credit available, to recreate the economic structure and behavior that got us into this mess.

Why should every small business, home and automobile be owned in largest measure by a bank's shareholders? And for what? So we can have our stuff a few months before we'd have it if we saved first and then paid cash? Rented a few more years before buying a home? Drove a little older car?

Why should one of our largest expenses -- as taxpayers as well as consumers -- be the transfer of our hard-earned dollars (in the form of interest payments) to bankers and investors who have contributed neither goods nor services to our economy? Banks were getting "bailouts" from the federal government -- that is, you and me as taxpayers -- long before they brought down our economy. Do you know what one of (if not the) largest expenses of the federal government is? That's right, interest payments from you and me to those wealthy enough to loan their money to our government -- some $412 billion in the FY2008 budget! Federal Budget Spending and the National Debt. I'd say that's a pretty nice income for what Senator Bob Dole once described as "indoor work with no heavy lifting."

And our payments to those folks are only going to increase as our government continues its present "solution," this glide path to economic hell: getting us out of a economic mess created by credit and debt by taking on more credit and debt.

FromDC2Iowa

Friday, March 06, 2009

Don't Buy Stuff

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