What follows is my train of thought on this subject.  I’m particularly interested in my readers’ feedback on this one, so please email me with your comments at .

While I disapprove of discrimination based on any unlawful means, I’m not certain if I think this is a discrimination issue.  Simply put, the market for jobs is fundamentally the same as the market for any other good or service.  An individual places a certain value on their time and skills, and an employer places a certain value on having certain tasks completed.  While “equal pay for equal work” is a catchy slogan, if you believe in the efficiency of markets, then you can’t accept that idea.

Two people hired to do the same job only makes one side of the market equal between the people.  It means that the company is, in theory, willing to pay the same amount for each person.  There is still the other side of the equation to consider, however.  If one person is willing to do the work for less, then according to market principles, they can, should, and generally will be paid less.

While a company may be willing to pay $50,000 for an employee, if the employee is willing to accept $42,000, then the employer has no reason to pay the employee more.  There is a bit of a snag though.  If there is one available position, and two people with identical qualifications apply for it, and one is willing to accept less money, then in theory, the person willing to accept less money should be the one the company hires.  If that were actually the case, however, wages would tend to even out as people who value their time comparatively higher than their competition would be forced to lower their expectations in order to get hired.  So, how can the disparity be explained?

I call this explanation “implied quality”.  If two people with identical qualifications are hired to perform the same job, at the same time “equal pay for equal work” suggests that they should be paid the same amount, but at least some of the time, the more expensive employee will be hired over their less expensive counterpart.  If the market is operating efficiently, then the only explanation is that something differentiates the employees, besides their qualifications.

Consider this example: I’m at the store looking for a new webcam.  I see two webcams that display identical techncal specs on the box, but one is $25 and one is $50.  As a consumer, I’ll probably buy the $50 webcam, particularly if other webcams are also in the $50 range, because the question is worth asking, “why is this particular webcam being offered at a discount?”.

Likewise, when two employees vying for the same position are willing to sell their time to a company for different rates, there may be some tendency for an employer to favor a more expensive employee, based on an assumption that there are elements not “printed on the box” that make the more expensive employee worth more.

I don’t approve of unlawful discrimination, but I also don’t approve of only looking at one side of the labor market to decide that two employees should be paid the same amount.

What do you think?  Please email me at with your thoughts!

I agree with Rep. Tiahrt.  When guns are more difficult to legally acquire, law abiding citizens are more deterred from purchasing a gun than criminals.

A person’s willingness to pay for a gun is a function of two key variables:

1. Their desire to control a violent confrontation.
2. Their likelihood that they will find themselves in a violent confrontation.

I make the assumption that all people want to be in control of a hostile situation, so variable 1 is effectively constant for both criminals and potential victims.  As a criminal, I want to control the situation, so I can rob someone.  As a victim, I want to control the situation, to prevent my property from being stolen, and to protect myself from bodily harm.

That being the case, the variable to consider when evaluating a person’s desire to acquire a gun is their relative likelihood of being in a hostile encounter.  I argue that a criminal is more likely to be in a hostile encounter — they seek it out, in fact.  A potential victim is only as likely to find themselves in a hostile encounter as their local crime rate.

So if a criminal is more likely to be in a hostile encounter, then a gun is more valuable to a criminal.  The more value a person places on a gun, the higher price they are willing to pay to acquire one, and the greater hassle they are willing to endure.

Whenever the government imposes regulations, they inhibit that particular market from operating at optimal efficiency, which generally increases the cost of the end product.  More specifically, a mandatory 7-day waiting period to buy a gun, concealed weapons permit fees, and trigger lock laws increase the hassle that a law-abiding citizen must endure and the price they must pay in order to purchase, own, and carry a gun.  This causes less law-abiding citizens to be willing to go through the hassle, so less law-abiding citizens carry.

Criminals on the other hand place a higher value on the gun, so they are already more willing to endure higher prices and greater hassles.  Add to this that a criminal is less likely to buy their gun from a licensed seller, less likely to have a concealed weapons permit, and in general less likely to care about following gun control laws, and the result is that criminals are less likely to be impacted by government regulation, and will be impacted to a lesser degree than law-abiding citizens.

What this means is that increased government regulation of guns means that the scales are tipped further in favor of criminals.  The phrase “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” is to say that outlawing guns only stops people who follow the law from having them, so all that is accomplished is that the people who are armed are already predisposed to breaking the law.

Rather than trying to make us safer by making it harder for responsible people to have guns, I propose that we would be safer with less or no government regulation.  Specifically, consider the effect of repealing the law requiring citizens to carry a concealed weapons permit in order to carry a gun on their person.  If it is easier to carry a gun without breaking the law, more people will carry guns.  This means that when a criminal is selecting a victim, he is less certain that the would-be victim is unarmed, which makes the criminal less likely to engage the would-be victim.

Also when something happens like the Virginia Tech shootings, if students were allowed to carry their guns on campus, perhaps someone could have stopped the gunman before he had killed so many (or any) people.  There is a reason most criminals won’t try to rob a gun store full of customers in the same way that they’ll rob a bank while it’s full of people.  (by the way, in most states, it’s illegal to carry a gun into a bank, so it’s an easy target for a criminal)  Maybe I’m biased, but it seems to me that a room full of gun-toting people is a more effective deterrent to criminals than a room full of security cameras.

That’s one example of how decreased government regulation can make us safer, but anything that makes it easier to lawfully buy and carry a gun helps even the odds between criminals and potential victims.  If everyone is carrying, then everyone is on even footing, and no criminal in his right mind would try to attack someone.

That still leaves room for criminals that are crazy, but I’d prefer crazy criminals (who will exist regardless) to insane gun control policies.

The Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act, if it hadn’t been shot down by the Senate, would have put in place a presidential designee, who would have the power to tell the car companies they must produce “a product mix and cost structure that is competitive in the United States market”.  The remove the doublespeak, there would be a government entity that could tell the car companies what cars to make, and how much they can be sold for.  We’ve socialized banks, and now the government wants to socialize the bloated auto industry.  Fantastic.

According to GM, the average factory worker makes $29.78 per hour, plus benefits, and Democrats say “I think they [the UAW] have made plenty of concessions” (McCaskill, D-MO).  Really?  Let’s tally up what the UAW has conceded:  They offered to delay (that’s delay, not discontinue) company payments into a union-run trust fund that will take over retiree health care costs starting in 2010.  They agreed to end the controversial “jobs bank” program in which laid-off workers get most of their pay and benefits after unemployment pay runs out (translation: a program where people who aren’t working are still getting paid — this is how much extra money the UAW has laying around!).

The Detroit Three are going bankrupt because they can’t make cars cheaply enough, or sell them expensively enough to make a profit.  Those UAW workers that make $29.78 per hour…that comes out to almost $60,000 per year.  I don’t make that much with my college education!!  Guess what, folks — you’re overpaid!!  But that’s right, they’ve made enough concessions.  They shouldn’t take a pay cut from their $60,000 a year jobs. 

Fine, UAW, you don’t want to be part of the solution?  What kind of wage are you expecting from a company that goes bankrupt?  If the car company dies, your job goes away, so it might be in your best interest to, oh I don’t know, lift your little finger to help.

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) told CNSNews.com he does not believe it is the government’s role to tell companies what they must pay their employees.  Really?  It’s not the government’s role to tell companies how to do business, but it IS the role of government to float private enterprise a loan that will never be repayed, when private enterprise fails to be competitive?  I’m confused about which government interventions into private enterprise are okay, and which aren’t.  Can you clarify it for me, Senator Conrad?  Or is it really that several Democrats are so obviously bought by the UAW that they might as well be on the payroll?  If you really believe that the government shouldn’t tell companies what to pay their employees, Senator Conrad, would you support abolishing the federal minimum wage??  I’ll bet my next paycheck that you wouldn’t.  If you really believe that free enterprise should be free, then why do you support spending taxpayer money to cover the losses of those enterprises??

Unions had an important role in protecting workers.  They lobbied for the 40-hour work-week, minimum wages, workplace safety standards, and fair treatment, all in their time.  Nowadays, however, unions play an important role in strongarming employers into contracts that are so bloated that the companies can’t afford to stay in business.  Yeah, that’s a great long-term strategy — price yourselves right out of a job, then refuse to bend when the company can’t afford you anymore. 

Let the companies go into bankruptcy.  Let the workers lose their jobs.  Let the UAW run out of money, then maybe they’ll understand the err of their ways.  The problem is that won’t happen.  One way or another, the federal government is going to float the auto industry. 

So my only remaining question is this: when do I get a fat check from the government, or am I just a revenue source meant for bailing out ineffective companies?

I’m disgusted.

^Z

According to Wikipedia [link] (which I acknowledge is not a terribly reliable primary source, however, information that it cites from elsewhere is used here), “the CRA seeks to ensure the provision of credit to all parts of a community, regardless of the relative wealth or poverty of a neighborhood.”  Did you catch that?  Let’s remove the doublespeak.  “parts of a community” = “people”.  “the relative wealth or poverty of a neighborhood” = “their ability to pay back loans”.

So the quote should read “the CRA seeks to ensure the provision of credit to all people, regardless of their ability to pay back loans.”  It sounds a whole lot more ridiculous when the fluffy language is removed.  Think about it for a second — the act encourages lenders to lend to people in relatively impoverished neighborhoods.  If the neighborhood is relatively impoverished, then on average, the people living there are relatively less likely to repay their debts, making them a riskier prospect for lending.  Why then should banks be pressured into lending to these people??

Politicians like to spin it by saying that people should be able to acquire credit based on their ability to repay the loan, rather than where they live.  What the politicians are missing is that where a person lives is a factor in determining their ability to repay a loan.  In the same way that I’ll pay more for renter’s insurance if I live a terrible neighborhood, living in that neighborhood suggests something about my ability or willingness to repay debt.  If I’m so good at repaying debt, why do I still live in such a crappy neighborhood?  It’s a valid question.

Having said that, the CRA isn’t the whole story, when it comes to the housing bubble.  The CRA all by itself isn’t a smoking gun.  However, the CRA pressuing banks into lending to lower income borrowers, combined with the securitization (making them into securities, selling them on the market) of the loans, combined with the historically low Federal Funds Rate, made money very easily accessible.  This, combined with increases in real estate speculation, just set us up for failure. 

I don’t blame the CRA for the whole thing, but it certainly contributed in no small part to this culture that everyone is entitled to own a home, nice things, and free-flowing credit.  That culture is ultimately what is responsible for the housing bubble, and though the CRA didn’t single-handedly cause that culture to come about, I argue that without the CRA, it wouldn’t have.

The last thing I’d like to touch on is the concept of predatory lending.  I mentioned this briefly in a previous blog, but I’d like to go into a bit more detail.  Some critics of “predatory lending” cite “risk-based pricing” as a predatory lending practice.  This is just silly!  If you’re less likely to pay me back, then I’m going to charge you more for the loan than I would someone who’s more reliable.  It’s experiment time!

Let’s say for example that I loan $100 to each of 100 people.  I’ve lent out $10,000.  Now, if I estimate that 20 of those people won’t pay me back, then in order to break even, I need to get $125 back from each of the 80 people that will actually pay, so to break even, I have to charge at least a 25% interest rate.  Now charging the interest rate increases the repayment amount, which would cause a few more people to fail to pay me back, but it’s a diminishing effect, so I’ll leave it out for simplicity’s sake.

Now imagine I lend a different $10,000 to a different 100 people.  Let’s say these people are much more likely to pay me back — I estimate that only 4 of them will fail to pay me back.  So to break even, each of the 96 people who pay me back must pay me $104.17, a 4.17% interest rate.  The point is, if a person is in a higher risk group, the bank rightly charges a higher interest rate, because that group, on balance doesn’t pay back their loans as consistently.  This is not rocket science.

Then there’s the concept of Caveat Emptor.  Here’s the think, folks.  You’re not buying a box of chicken nuggets.  You’re buying a home, which in all likelihood is the most expensive thing you will ever purchase.  Don’t you think you should do your homework first?  How do adjustable rate mortgages work?  What are “points?”  What is a “good” interest rate?  These are all questions you owe it to yourself to research.  Mortgage lenders, like all other businesses, exist to make money.  People go out and buy a home without understanding the terms to which they agreed, then they want to blame the mortgage company for not adequately explaining it?  Last time I checked, it was up to the person signing the contract to understand what they’re signing!!!  And I’d like to know how it’s possible to lend someone too much.  Sure, I’ll qualify you for a $750,000 loan.  It’s a 3/1 30-year ARM with a 3% introductory rate and a 10% change cap.  That means after 3 years, the interest rate can change, and it can change every 1 year after that by as much as 10% per year.  That means at the end of year 3, your interest rate can go from 3% to 13%, and the following year, it can go to 23%.  Additionally, let’s do the math here: Let’s say I offer you a 30-year fixed rate mortgage for $750,000 at 6%.  Based on CNNMoney.com’s Mortgage Calculator [link], your monthly payment would be just about $4,500 per month.  Can you afford this payment?  Too many people saw the dollar signs of how much the bank was willing to lend them, and they went all-in, never really considering that a) they can’t actually afford the payment, or that b) their payment could change.  Understand the terms before you sign.  If you don’t, then I would argue that you’re not responsible enough to own a home in the first place, and have no sympathy for you when you lose it. 

This pervasive attitude of entitlement is killing us.  We act like we all deserve to own a home, whether we can really afford it or not.  We act like we have a right to have the big screen TV, the BMW, and the garage to park it in.  The middle class thinks they deserve all the amenities the upper class can afford, and as a result of their over-spending, the middle class relegates itself to a debt-ridden life, ultimately resulting in a lower class existence.

If we’re to make it, we need to learn to live within the confines of our wallets, rather than the expanse of our egos, and that, folks, is the bottom line.

^Z

First of all, this lecturer spoke as if there were no valid contravening arguments to redistribution of wealth being a good thing.  Now, being the argumentative sort, the moment someone claims that their presupposition is the only valid position from which to craft an opinion, I immediately want to knock down their pedestal.  The lecturer’s comments were based around the notion that policies X, Y and Z are good because they result in greater redistribution of wealth.  Great, so there are policies that cause a certain effect — the problem is, she never discussed if or why that effect should be desired.  This same logic could be used to say “bombing Moscow is good because it will result in Thermonuclear War.”  Actions are only good if the results of such actions are good, so to continue with my example, if Thermonuclear War is bad (and I think most of use can agree on that point), then bombing Moscow is also bad.

It’s just irresponsible to to claim that the means are good without establishing why the ends are good.  To establish the “goodness” of something, one must also establish the “goodness” of the effects of that thing.  This lecturer’s comments amount to saying “this is good because I said so.”  Yeah, that’s convincing.

That’s the context upon which I want to raise a larger question: If, to be a moral society, we must have a social conscience, does it follow that we must provide for the needs of everyone in our society?  As usual, the answer to that question seems to be mostly dependent on your own perspective.  If you’re poor, then redistribution of wealth provides a benefit to you.  If you’re wealthy, however, redistribution of wealth harms you.  Supporters of this redistribution like to suggest that taking $10,000 from a person who makes $100,000 per year and giving it to someone who makes $20,000 per year, helps the poorer person to a greater degree than the degree to which it harms the wealthier person.  They justify it, saying things like “it’s only ten percent of the rich man’s income, but it increases the poor man’s income by 50%!”

There are two huge issues here.  First of all, redistribution supporters don’t want to answer this very simple question: “does a poor person have a right to a share of a rich person’s income, and if so, why?”  Frankly, I don’t think anyone has a right to anyone else’s property.  An individual has the right to offer goods or services, in exchange for payment, but they do not have a right to commandeer someone else’s property, simply because the other person has more property.  By this logic, if I own a half acre of land, and my neighbor owns 5 acres, I should have every right to claim part of his land as my own.  My neighbor bought his land with money.  In the same way, we each “buy” our income by spending time working.  If I don’t have a right to a portion of my neighbor’s land, why does a poor person have a right to a portion of a wealthy person’s income?

The second issue is an exercise in reductio ad absurdum, reduction to the absurd.  If it is a good thing for money to be redistributed from wealthier people to poorer people, then to maximize the “goodness” in our society, we ought to redistribute as much as possible.  Said differently, to maximize the “goodness” in our society, we must completely equalize income across the board.  The result is a society in which every member of society receives the same amount of money regardless of what they do.  In this example, a doctor, someone who went to college for at least 8 years, would bring in the same income as a high school dropout.  This makes no sense.  The expense of the higher education can be mitigated by the argument that college would be paid for by the government, but there is no mitigation for disparity in the investment of time required to complete medical school versus dropping out of high school.  The fact is that society places a higher value on the expertise of a doctor, as opposed to the expertise of a high school sophomore, and so it follows that a doctor ought to be paid more.

So what happens if we equalize all income?  Quite simply, if there is no return on the additional time investment required for higher paying jobs, then fewer people will make the investment into higher education.  If there is no additional income as an incentive to innovate, then fewer people seek out innovative ideas, resulting in stagnation in technological advancement.  In fact, if working harder does not return greater compensation, and if working less hard does not return less compensation, there is no incentive to work, and as a result fewer and fewer people will work.  As this continues, fewer and fewer people opt to work, decreasing overall national production, which decreases the equalized income that each citizen receives.  Less compensation results in even less incentive to become educated, innovate or work, and the downward spiral continues.  Ultimately the result is a society in which no one works at all, at which point, we all starve and die.

Now obviously, that’s the extreme.  But if we can demonstrate the extreme of a supposedly good thing is no longer good, then there exists some point at whch the net result of a good thing is less and less good, at some point becoming neutral, and ultimately turning into a negative effect.  The real question, therefore, is at what point does the “goodness” of wealth redistribution wear out?  This is a difficult question to answer, and it is frequently debated in the halls of power.

From an ideological perspective, it comes down to what you believe the purpose of government to be.  According to the preamble of the US Constitution, the purpose of government is to “…establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…”  In my view, this means the purpose of government is to establish and enforce laws to justly govern the people (establish justice), protect the people from domestic (ensure domestic tranquility) and foreign threats (provide for the common defense), all of which “secure the blessings of liberty.”  The point of contention, therefore, comes with how we define what it means to “promote the general welfare.”  Redistributionists suggest that to promote the general welfare, the government is empowered to ensure every citizen’s needs are provided for.  To do this, the government needs money, which it takes from other citizens.  But again, to what extent?  If government exists to execute the wishes of a society (that’s the “for the people” part), then if the government wishes to provide for its citizens’ needs, then it would follow that society wishes to provide for its members’ needs.  If this is the case, then why does the government need to facilitate it?  If society really does wish to provide for everyone’s needs, then those who can afford to support others would do so, negating the need for government intervention.  Clearly this is not the case.  Therefore, if society does not deem it neccessary to provide for everyone’s needs (demonstrated by society’s failure to do so), and if the purpose of government is to execute the wishes of society, then by extension, it is NOT the government’s purpose to redistribute wealth for the purposes of providing for citizens’ needs.

From a practical perspective, any redistribution of wealth reduces incentive to work, innovate and become educated to some degree.  In an optimally functioning society, incentive to become educated, work, and innovate is maximized, providing for the long-term success of the society.  In order to maximize incentive, incentive-reducing policies should not be implemented.  By this reasoning, wealth redistributing policies should not be implemented to avoid stifling innovation.

So the bottom line is this: I agree that redistribution of wealth is a good thing, to some extent.

I just believe that extent is zero.

^Z

Common Comment: “We’re in a recession, whether the government admits it or not”

The Truth: A recession is defined as “two consecutive quarters of negative GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth.”[1][2][3]  Wikipedia discounts this definition, saying “American newspapers often quote the rule of thumb that a recession occurs when real gross domestic product (GDP) growth is negative for two or more consecutive quarters. This measure fails to register several official (NBER defined) US recessions.”[4]  However, I take issue with this statement in that looking through NBER’s data on US business cycles[5], they don’t list a period of contraction (recession) lasting shorter than 6 months, which actually gives further credence to the two quarter definition of recession. 

The fact of the matter is, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which keeps extensive economic data in their FRED system, GDP hasn’t declined for 2 quarters consecutively since 2001.[6]

So to those people who say “We’re in a recession, whether the government admits it or not”, you’re wrong.  Sorry.  The non-partisan, non-profit group that declares recessions, has not done so.  Despite increased unemployment and the stock market’s dismal performance, no, we are not yet in a recession.

 Common Comment: “I want to know what the government is going to do to fix the economy.”

The Truth: Have these people ever considered the possibility that the economy isn’t broken in the first place??  There’s a concept that everyone’s heard of, but few actually understand.  It’s TANSTAAFL: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

First of all, too many people confuse the stock market with the economy-at-large, so I’ll just address that first.  Think about stocks for a minute — every time someone wins, someone has to lose.  Every time you buy low, someone else is selling low.  Every time you sell high, somone else is buying high.  In order to win, someone must lose.  Now, having said that, investors are panicking because the market is down to 9,000 (as of this writing) from the 14,000 it was at this time last year, and they’re saying the government needs to “fix” things.  Here’s a novel concept: nothing’s broken!  Could it be that the market should never have been at 14,000 in the first place?  Could it be that artificially inflated housing prices, caused by low interest rates and government mandated (Community Reinvestment Act) subprime loans given to lower income buyers, securitization of those mortages, and rampant real estate speculation caused the market to be much higher that it ever should have been?  Could it be, that the market is doing exactly what it’s supposed to, and correcting the error?  Maybe people do realize this, and are just so shortsighted that what they want is the government to prop up the market long enough for them to get out without taking a big loss.  It’s not that they think the market needs fixing, is that they’re upset that the market is biting THEM.

Secondly, I don’t think people realize that the economy is kind of a wild beast.  It’s difficult to control, and frankly, it’s not a beast that we should try to control.  It’ll just lash out at us if we do.  There are natural cycles in an economy.  Ups and downs.  The problem with government intervention is that it doesn’t usually help things.  By the time the government sees a problem, decides what to do about it, makes the change, then the change starts to affect things, the economy often has already begun to shift on its own.  Once this happens, the governmental change serves to steepen the movement, making the rollercoaster ride all the more wild.  The irony is not lost on me that when the government wanted to stop short-sellers from manipulating the market, they temporarily banned short-selling, thereby manipulating the market themselves.  Here’s the deal folks, I’m your classic, mostly-laissez-faire kind of economist.  In my view, if the inefficient and all too clueless government would leave the economy alone, the cycles would be less extreme.  They would still happen, but that’s a natural part of economies.  To try to change that is just playing with fire, and now it’s our turn to get burned.

The Bottom Line(s): To get right down to it, the government passed a 700 billion dollar rescue package to buy up troubled assets of banks.  I think it’s a terrible idea!  I’m torn though, because while this kind of government intervention goes against every free market principle I hold to, I don’t see much choice.  The government made this mess when they required banks to offer loans in any geographic area in which they do business, and then under the Clinton administration directed them to use subprime loans to increase home ownership among lower income folks.  Am I the only one that thinks that poor people “owning” homes isn’t a good idea?  Who’s most likely to default on their loan?  People who can’t afford it!  Making up these interest only, zero down, and adjustable rate mortgages just set us up for our downfall.  Because this artifical boon to home sales caused us to be in this mess, the market itself has thusfar been unable to absorb the failure.  On the one hand, I have my principles and what I know about economics.  On the other, there’s the reality that without credit, businesses are going to have a hard time doing business.  (Maybe that’s the real issue, that everyone needs credit to operate…  Anyone remember the old days of a cash economy??)  I’m really uneasy about where this will take us…

To wrap things up, I’m tired of people playing the foreclosed homeowner as a victim.  I don’t believe there’s any such thing as predatory lending.  You either bought a house you could afford, or you didn’t.  If you bought a house with an ARM that you could afford for a few years, while you hoped to sell it for a profit before the interest rate changed on you, YOU ARE NOT A VICTIM.  These people bought homes they could barely afford, or could only afford for short while.  They intended to keep the house for a few years, ride the appreciation wave, then sell it off before their payment went up.  They used their home as a short-term investment, rather than a long-term wealth-building mechanism, and they got burned.  Why should my tax dollars be used to restructure these risk-takers’ mortgages??

Americans seem to have this notion that every one of us deserves to own a home.  No.  We don’t.  We deserve to have that for which we can afford to pay.  I don’t own a home.  Why?  Because I can’t afford one yet.  This is a concept I wish more American’s would get through their heads.  If you have a fixed-rate mortgage, at a monthly payment you can afford, then there’s no reason you should have to foreclose (unless your income decreases for some reason and you don’t have enough savings to float yourself — though I could argue this is still your own fault).  If you don’t fall into that group, then I have precisely zero sympathy for your foreclosure plight.  Maybe you shouldn’t play fast and loose with your finances.

I’m fortunate in that my industry typically performs better during times of economic hardship, and my wife’s industry is a neccessity, so we’re quite stable in our jobs, and I’m grateful for that.  For those who have lost jobs, I feel for you, and hope you’re able to get back on your feet.  For those who bought homes they couldn’t really afford, welcome (back) to apartment living!!

^Z