It's the Lifestyle, Stupid

I am not an economist, but I pride myself on having a certain amount of common sense. In the one economics class I ever took, my wizened professor constantly reached for hair to tear out which he no longer possessed because, as he put it, I could never get past the notion that you can't spend money you don't have. He was right: I've never succeeded in suppressing that notion. Three decades later, I believe the preponderance of evidence actually supports my stubborn conviction.

People like me don't much cotton to picking up tabs for those who walk into the restaurant without any money in their pocket and proceed to gorge. I'm not qualified to lecture anyone on the virtues or vices of "bail-out": I just know that I'm very weary of the trend which punishes me for being responsible: i.e., paying as I go and saving what I can. On the other hand, I understand that jobs will be lost--possibly my own--in the ripple-effect of an economic calamity. The fools who almost run me off the road every day as they chatter merrily on cell phones are often paying off cell and van and GPS with interest, and I couldn't care less if their credit suddenly dries up; but when these fools are no longer buying playthings and plaything-producers lay off thousands, my students will no longer have money for tuition, and bottom-rung professors like me will also get a pink slip.

Yet I am strangely resigned to any eventuality. I fore see no purely good outcome--not in our banking crisis nor in any of the dozens of crises that loom over our heads--and I am fully prepared to live with a 67% bad decision as opposed to a 52% bad decision. 15% more bad hardly seems worth a night of lost sleep when the result will be more than half bad, anyway. I just don't care any more. We have passed the point where 90% good decisions might have been made. For crying out loud, we have two socialists competing for the presidency! Let the night descend. Maybe a few stars will shine.

For as an honest man and a hard-working adult, I cannot say with a straight face that we Americans deserve any better than whatever miseries await us. The idiot on the cell phone floorboarding a $50,000 van from traffic light to traffic light is a very apt crystallization of our frivolity and creeping downright stupidity. A certain few thousands of innocents will die annually because of this idiot, taken as a collective phenomenon, and your son and mine may be forcibly enlisted to go leave a leg or an arm on a sand dune halfway around the world so that the van may be first to the next light. My loathing and contempt for this "lifestyle"--for what has so often been called "our way of life" since 9/11--exceeds my expressive abilities. To top it all off, I must hear various self-styled proponents of a feeding-frenzy mentality inscrutably dubbed "conservatism" brand my position "liberal" and label those who share it with me "America-haters". Words simply fail me. I feel compelled to write these columns sometimes precisely to map out the point (no GPS needed) where words fail me.

All I can say is, consider my response to my old economics professor, may he rest in peace. Let vain chatter wash over your head like a passing squall, then resume your way along the path which your heart tells you is that of true virtue.