The Fireside: "Debt, spending, and social justice"

Source: The Fireside

Son,

I admire your determination to not have debt. The Republican Congress and Administration should be so wise. Your mother and I made the young couple’s traditional mistake of using credit cards. The result was that you lived in virtual poverty in your youth.

My first awareness of managing debt was when I was twenty-two years old. Your sister was just born and we did not own a washing machine. Those were the transitional days between cloth diapers and disposable diapers – we used cloth. The local mall had a laundromat and we would go there every week. We would put the clothes in the washer and then window shop for forty-five minutes. We would return to the laundromat and switch the laundry to the dryers – then repeat the cycle. I remember going to Sears and looking at washers and dryers – we had no money. We thought about it awhile – then one day we were at a garage sale and they had a Sears Kenmore Dryer for $55.00. We had that much. We bought the dryer and then went back to Sears. They agreed to set up an account for us and to sell us a wash machine ‘on payments.’ They charged something like six-thousand percent interest – but the payments were $12 a month. That was considerably cheaper than what we were spending per month at the laundromat. We contracted for our first debt.

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I remember installing the washer and dryer and feeling like I actually owned something. I made the payments and we had convenience. Every time I made a payment I went and knocked on the wash machine – yep – there it is – I have something. (I finally paid off Sears last month, the wash machine cost $6,212, with interest.)

We have become a nation in debt. Both personal and public. When the economy slows the Federal Reserve gives it some false stimulation by lowering interest rates. There is only one reason for this – if people in America can’t borrow – they can’t buy. If they can’t buy then factories have no need to produce. Our world crashes down. Our economy is in a real predicament.

There is an old and incorrect axiom that if you need to stimulate the economy you just start a war. Wars do tend to have a short term impact on economic growth – the military/industrial complex is fed and it grows, creating jobs. Sounds good on the surface – but we are producing a product so we can blow it up, while we increase our debt. Rockets and bullets and armored vehicles are not consumer products. No one gets to wash their children’s diapers. No one gets to have the comfort of driving their own vehicle to work – we blow it up. When the next generation makes a payment they do not have a washing machine to look at and treasure as their own.

I get irritated when U. S. Senator Kit Bond, running for reelection, announces that he has just secured 800 bazillion dollars of ‘Federal Money” for roads in Missouri. He does not bother to add, “And by the way, I put it on YOUR credit card!” What the hell, it was just ‘Federal Money’ anyway.

I am again more proud of you than ever, son. The solution to our economic woes, both personal and public, is no debt. Individuals like you and your wife have to step up to the plate and say, in clear and uncertain terms: “NO MORE DEBT!” It will only be then that our representatives in Washington D.C. will hear us – and follow the lead of responsible people.

Now, you and the readers know that I regularly expound a liberal message of helping others, of ’social justice,’ as John Wesley might say. Now here I am saying that we should not have debt. Are these conflicting viewpoints?

No debt is equal to social justice.

Dad