“…It probably is not coincidence that Americans got very serious about the spectacle of the wedding right around the same time they began giving up on the idea of marriage. “Until death do us part” is tough, but a “big day” we can still manage. All you need is bad taste and money.
This brings me to the actual subject of today’s letter, which is, of course, debt.
Last week, Slate published a particularly insipid piece of sympathy journalism (it is part of a series) under the headline: “What It’s Like to Have $163,718 of Student Debt When You’re Living Paycheck to Paycheck: The story of Arthur Stallworth, age 36, from Silver Spring, Maryland.” Sympathy is a barrier to good journalism because it prevents the asking of necessary questions. (“Empathy,” which our politicians like to talk about, is not an emotion at all but a literary conceit.) For example: Mr. Stallworth reports a household income of $125,000 a year, which is not too bad for a man with an “online doctorate of education and interdisciplinary leadership.” There are lawyers and architects who do worse. (The report is silent about how much of the couple’s income comes from Mr. Stallworth and how much comes from his wife.) In spite of that income, he says he “couldn’t afford it” when his loan repayments rose…from $200 a month to $400 a month. Really? His household income is twice the national average; how is it that he is getting wiped out by a $200-a-month increase in a longstanding bill? The headline promises to tell us “what it’s like” to be in that guy’s shoes, so curiosity is assumed.What’s the deal?
Likewise: Mr. Stallworth reports that his student debt was $100,000 when he got his doctorate five years ago, but today it is $163,718.20. That implies an interest rate in excess of 10 percent a year, but student-loan interest rates are generally a lot less than that. (Federal loans currently are at 0.00 percent because of the epidemic, but the rates run from 2.75 percent for undergraduate borrowers to 5.30 percent for unsubsidized graduate-student loans.) There’s probably a good explanation for how that happened, but thatexplanation isn’t in Rachelle Hampton’s story, which is supposed to be a story about debt but remains willfully vague on the financial details.
What is in the story, instead, are observations such as this one: “Halfway through, I reached the point where I was really, really done with Nebraska.I was always in PWIs [predominantly white institutions]. At first you don’t really recognize that stuff, but then people say things like, ‘You don’t have any hair.’No, I have a fade. But they don’t know what a fade is.”
I am not entirely surprised that some predominantly white people in Nebraska do not have a satisfactory vocabulary for discussing tonsorial matters with African-American colleagues. It is not clear what that has to do with Mr. Stallworth’s personal debt situation. And that situation is extraordinary considering he got a “full ride” for his undergraduate degree, with a scholarship that covered both tuition and room and board. How does this actually happen?
And, then, the kicker: “I had to take out a loan from my retirement in order to pay for our wedding.”
At which point, I found myself saying out loud: “Well, no. No, you didn’t.”
You didn’t have to. It wasn’t obligatory. You could have gone to city hall in the morning and taken your friends and family out to a nice lunch afterward. (You know what they would have done? They would have thanked you. Most weddings are dreadful.)People do it all the time. Here, what he needed was a visit from Bob Newhart in therapist mode: “Don’t do that.”
Mr. Stallworth is hardly alone in his assumptions about what simply must be done. There is a great deal to dig into there, but, for the moment, I will conclude with this: The belief that you simply must have a burdensomely expensive dog-and-pony show to get marriedand the belief that you simply must have a “doctorate of education and interdisciplinary leadership” to lead an educational institution — and that both of these must be had even at the cost of assuming ruinous debt — are, at the foundation, the same belief, rooted in the same error.
A society unmoored from genuine values will embrace meretricious ones, just as a society disconnected from divinity will always find something to worship — what do you think is really going on in our ridiculous modern weddings?“
We’re solidly with Williamson on this one, both in terms of his assessment of the enormous waste of money modern weddings represent (easy for a guy with three sons to say!), but more importantly, for distinguishing between what constitutes a “need” versus a “want”, as well as the unwillingness of so many to bear personal responsibility for failing to recognize the difference.
That being said, here’s the juice: we begrudge no one the “right” to provide either their intended or offspring a lavish wedding, particularly if one has the cash available to do so; it’s not our business to tell others how to spend their money. Provided, if they go into debt to purchase a car, a home…or to pay for a fancy wedding or some useless college degree, they don’t look to us…or anyone else…to get them out of the hole they dug for themselves.
This brings to mind the Baltimorons whose son, having been injured in a car accident sans health insurance, was the literal poster child for ObamaCare. What The Dear Misleader failed to reveal was the family lacked health insurance not because they couldn’t afford it, but rather owing to their spending priorities. A $400,000 row house in a trendy neighborhood, two automobiles (at least one of which was a BMW), flat screen televisions and private schools for their son and daughter were more important than health insurance.
Which again, while terribly irresponsible, is fine…provided they don’t come looking for us to cover the costs of their medical care after the accident.
Spending money on, let alone going into debt for things you want while ignoring what you need, and then complaining about having to pay back what you borrowed or looking for others to bear the consequences for your profligacy isn’t a “right”, it’s justplain wrong.
P.S. Seeking reparations for “slavery” from those who never owned slaves for those who never were falls into the category of “just plain wrong“!
Next up, Best of the Web‘s Jim Freeman opines on the reality of…
“Since the novel coronavirus emerged late last year in China, Covid-19 has killed about 600,000 people worldwide. During that same time period about 30 million people in the world have died of something else.Thank goodness the virus has not been as fatal as many feared, yet many media observers keep insisting that it is.
…In the absence of a vaccine, necessary reopenings are so far proceeding more or less as one might have reasonably expected and hoped–with a continuing spread of infection but fewer fatal cases.
Yet most coverage is premised on the idea that a rise in cases, regardless of mortality, is an argument for extended lockdown. Tony Romm reports in the Washington Post:
Arizona had been one of the last states to close, and first to reopen, when the coronavirus started to sweep the nation this spring. But a brazen gamble to restart its struggling economy has backfired months later, threatening to plunge workers and businesses into a deeper financial hole.
In the bizarre world of conventional media analysis, burning trillions of dollars by shutting down society based on estimates from public health experts who turned out to be wrong was sensible, but allowing life-sustaining economic activity is a “brazen gamble.”
In reality the burden of proof remains on the lockdowners whose radical approach was originally premised on the idea that the virus would kill millions in the U.S. alone. Is anyone still sticking with those projections? If not, then please show the math justifying further restrictions. Governors who decided to reopen sensibly recognized the horrible mismatch between lockdown costs and benefits. The Post report continues:
Like Florida, Texas and others that opened early, Arizona now ranks as one of the country’s worst coronavirus hot spots, with more than 143,000 cases and more than 2,700 deaths as of this weekend.
It’s not easy to gain necessary perspective from the article, but the story does link to a page featuring various statistics related to the virus. According to the Post’s data, per capita Covid-19 deaths in Florida, Texas and Arizona remain far below the levels in New York and New Jersey. In fact the Post website shows that per capita deaths in both New York and New Jersey are more than 10 times the number in Texas.
These encouraging data out of the Sun Belt suggest at least a few possibilities, along with many others. One possibility is that many more people in the Northeast had the virus in the spring than we realized, so the mortality rate is lower than many feared. Another is that doctors have learned to offer better treatment. Another is that Sun Belt governors have learned to prioritize the protection of the vulnerable elderly, rather than forcing them to live in nursing homes with Covid patients, as in the New York example.
…There’s still so much we don’t know and this is no time to stop taking prudent measures like frequent hand-washing to protect our friends. But let’s also learn from what appears to be a Sun Belt success.”
Highlighted by the fact, Dr. Faux-Chi’s idiotic applause of Sonny Cuomo’s wholesale slaughter of the elderly notwithstanding, though having only 1/3 the population of Arizona, Texas and Florida combined, New York State had almost 3X the number of Wuhan-related fatalities.
Let that sink in: 1/3 the combined population and some 3 times the Wuhan-related fatalities. Now…
A record which deserves to live in infamy.
Since we’re on the subject of the infamous, the WSJ‘s Bill McGurn accurately assesses what he terms…
“…There’s no doubt the president has both the responsibility and the authority to protect federal property, which is what DHS is doing in Portland. But Mr. Trump would do well to narrow his rhetoric to make clear any federal intervention will be for this purpose and this purpose only—unless cities specifically ask for federal assistance. The hysterical reaction to the limited DHS intervention in Portland illuminates the Pottery Barn rule: The moment Mr. Trump intervenes in a troubled city, he owns it.
H.L. Mencken famously said: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Portland is one of America’s wokest white cities, with a woke white mayor just itching to dump his failure to keep order onto Mr. Trump. The chaos now consuming American cities has arisen on the watch of progressive politicians just like Mayor Wheeler, and they don’t deserve to be so easily let off the hook.“
We’re of the opinion voters in the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina know the difference between federal officers…
…and verminous human scum:
Heaven help the nation if they don’t.
Which brings us, inappropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:
(In other words, beware of GEEKS bearing GIFTS!)
Then there this one from Bill Meisen…
…another from Fielding Cocke…
…along with these from Bad Billy Magruder…
…and last, but certainly not least, this series of bon mots from Ed Hickey:
Though the Old Grey Nag certainly seems intent on letting Antifa know where Tucker Carlson lives!
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