Published: September 26, 2008 02:14 pm         

It’s too big, I can’t pay for it, you can keep it

Because I am a practical man — a trait I inherited from my parents, who inherited it from their parents, and so on — I drive a car and repair what needs to be repaired until it pretty much falls apart. If it still works, and I like it, why not keep it? (Especially if it’s paid for.)

My previous previously-owned vehicle was 9 years old when I looked underneath it and saw transmission fluid draining out onto my driveway.

While shopping for its successor, I test-drove a used SUV with a V-8 engine. (This was before the price of gasoline went crazy.) It had more accessories than I could find in one day, let alone figure out how to use.

It was a behemoth with plenty of giddyup-go and a fuel-consumption gauge that caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up when it displayed the effects of tromping down on the gas pedal.

I told the salesman it was too big, cost more than I could afford, had more gadgets than I needed and would be unreasonably expensive to feed.

He sold me a crossover vehicle that I’m still driving. Smaller and nimbler than the V-8, it actually has more voom but gets 22-23 mpg. It’s not fancy, and I understand how everything in the cockpit works.

People ask me if I like it, and I say “Yes.”

Other people ask me why I moved into the 100-plus-year-old house where I now live.

“Isn’t it too big for you?” some of them want to know.

I tell them it wasn’t too big for my father, and he was 89 ... which usually ends that discussion. It’s comfortable, it’s where I grew up and — most importantly — it’s paid for. It still works, and I like it. It’s my home.

Dad used to talk about life during the Depression. His father was a barber, his mother was a full-time housewife who had two sons and a daughter to raise, and their two-story house was nice, but modest.

Eight people (including my great-uncle, my great-grandfather and a girl who did chores for room and board) lived there. Folks today might consider it cramped, but they figured out how to use the space that was available. There was only one bathroom, but they had front and back porches, a one-car garage and enough of a yard to plant flowers. It worked, and they liked it. It was their home.

Some months, Granddad was able to pay only the interest on his mortgage — a few dollars — but that was fine with the bank. It needed the money, and its officers knew him and valued him as a trustworthy customer who would eventually cover his debt.

Times apparently have changed.

A friend told me that her son and daughter-in-law, who make $60,000 a year between them (before taxes), bought a $600,000 home with a mortgage of $3,000 a month. She and I could do the math; so can you.

“Whatever happened to a starter house?” she asked me. “One you can afford and live in for a few years and then trade up when you can?” No, this gas-guzzling SUV of a house was what they wanted, and someone figured out how to arrange the necessary financial smoke and mirrors.

If somebody tried to convince the folks in my family to buy an over-built, over-priced house we couldn’t afford — especially if it involved manipulating an adjustable-rate loan against a fixed-rate loan — we would tell him which neighborhood to put the house in ... the one that gets no sunlight.

Besides, the people who sold our family its houses wouldn’t have tried to talk us into it, and the bankers we’ve dealt with wouldn’t have loaned us the money. Everybody involved would have known better.

When Party A decides to buy something, Party B loans him the money for it, Party C sells it to him, and all three of them know Party A doesn’t have the means to justify it, any sensible observer would realize that the proceedings are lacking in sound judgment.

However, people have been doing this in America for years, and they’ve been allowed to get away with it. Some loaned money, others bought or sold property or did it with credit cards or other instruments. A few faint voices have warned against it, but nobody’s listened.

What else can you expect, though, when the people who govern us and regulate our business practices have themselves grown accustomed to borrowing and spending more money than they can ever repay? (Private citizens who keep writing checks they can’t cover usually wind up in jail.)

They do this because it helps them get re-elected. Our representatives shower us with money for buildings, programs, roads and bridges to nowhere and other things we may like, but could manage to live without.

We praise them for it and say how good they are to us, then raise hell when other people’s representatives do the same thing for them.

They offer it to us, we buy it, and the money for it seemingly comes out of thin air. Doesn’t matter if we can’t afford it. Some future generation of Americans will wind up with the bill.

Whatever the transaction, there’s a good chance it involves greed on both sides. We both get something we want. Still, a measure of greed is OK. Without it, we can’t have a successful capitalist society in which most people live comfortably. However, excessive greed combined with an absence of good sense makes for economic catastrophe.

It would be nice to round up the people who are responsible for our current financial mess, figure out how much of the $700 billion each is responsible for and take it out of their hides and golden parachutes.

But it won’t be that easy. There are too many of them. Those who were supposed to protect us let us down, and plenty of others were enthusiastic participants.

At least some of them may suffer to a certain extent, but you and I are the ones who will pay for it. If the bill hasn’t already arrived, it’s most likely in the mail.