I've been on an old movie-musical kick as of late, and it seems to me that we as a nation have much to learn from our nation's cinematic history. Take the economy, for example:
In "Summer Stock", Judy Garland plays a farmer, a no-nonsense, hardworking, up-with-the-roosters farmer. Judy inherited the farm when her father passed away, and even tho she was just a wee pretty lass, she had things running in tip-top shape. Until the droughts came and the crops failed. When the film begins, we meet a couple of Judy's farmhands who, after working the farm for decades, are leaving Judy to head for greener pastures (or at least, some place that can pay). Poor Judy is left alone with dozens of chickens and acres to plow and plant and no help of any kind. What's a farmgirl to do? All seems lost until Judy sees the solution in a magazine ad: She can do it all herself, if only she had a tractor. Well, that's the ticket! Get the girl a tractor and the farm will be saved!! So, Judy runs down to the general store, which is run by her fiancee of 4 years (a dud of a stud) and is owned by her would-be father-in-law (who sees no reason why a woman should be running a farm when she could just get married and be taken care of). Once there, she tells the two men that she knows what she needs to save her farm, and the gents seem somewhat interested in the words coming out of the pretty woman's mouth, seem to find her need to succeed in a man's field somewhat endearing if not entirely illogical, and they politely listen with fixed smiles drawn on their faces. Until she tells them what she needs: a tractor. And then...well, it's as if the needle was scratched across the record, the men jumped to their feet, they could hardly speak the word: "A- a- a- a...TRACTOR??!" What crazy pills was this woman taking? "A TRACTOR??" She might as well have asked for the Rockefellers themselves to come be field-hands! A tractor cost MONEY! Lots of it!! She couldn't simply be given a tractor to save her farm, because what if she had trouble paying for it? That wouldn't be prudent, not at all. No no, a tractor is a big purchase, far too big a purchase to be put on credit. CREDIT CAN'T BE GIVEN OUT SO EASILY!! Even if a tractor could save the farm, and therefore pay for itself in one harvest, it's still a huge financial risk for both the lender AND the borrower. Therefore, certain considerations must be made, payments must be agreed upon, etc etc... Eventually, Judy got her tractor. (And oh, the insanity that ensued! But it all works out brilliantly in the end, thanks to Gene Kelly.) But it wasn't easy. Not easy at all.
Fast-forward to today. Or, perhaps, fast-forward to a year or two ago. You want a tractor? No problem! Don't live on a farm? Who cares!! Don't have a job? Who cares!! Don't have any need for a tractor? Who cares!! The way we do business is this: You want it, it's yours!! Can't pay for it now, pay us later!! We'll charge you 25% interest over a long-term period so you will actually end up paying twice what that tractor is worth, which works for us! Okay, perhaps there haven't been a lot of shopping sprees that have resulted in the purchase of unneeded tractors. But just look at our highways: Are you going to tell me that all of those SUVs on the road are being driven by people who can actually afford them? We all know the truth, we've known it for years: We have been living way beyond our means with very little regard for how to pay for all of our stuff. And that's been perfectly acceptable! We're not living in the days of Judy and her tractor, when in order to make a big purchase, you'd better have good friends on the inside to help you get the money, and you'd better have a real solid plan for paying it all off. I guarantee no one was offering Judy an extended payment plan for her tractor. Knowing that the tractor was beyond her means, knowing that if she couldn't make the payments her tractor (and therefore her farm) would be taken away, this knowledge kept Judy working at sun-up every morning, this knowledge had Judy smile with pride each time she saw her tractor, this knowledge made it clear to Judy that there was no easy way out, that this tractor was an investment in her business and must be paid in full at the earliest possible time. Which makes perfect sense. When you are buying beyond your means, there should be a whole lot of thought going into this purchase. Is it a luxury or a necessity? How will it get paid off? How will the payments affect my other expenses? And yada yada yada, we all know what kind of thought process should be behind a big purchase. And we all know that this is not the way things have been working in our recent history. Again, check out the highways.
I'm going to keep watching old movies to gain perspective on current events. We know that the lessons of history can keep us from repeating history's mistakes (which is a good reason to know a thing or two about the history of the Supreme Court and the history of our Constitution, in case you might someday find yourself as a candidate for one of our country's highest offices). And yes, we know that buying beyond our means can be a recipe for disaster unless we've got a clear plan in place to make steady payments for our purchases. Yes, I knew all about it, even as I made the choice to go to graduate school at one of the country's most expensive training programs, to study a craft that has yet to keep me above the poverty line in my 10 years on the job. I truly couldn't imagine anyone giving me loans to pay for it, especially when you look over my earnings history, especially when taking into account that I want to be a STAGE ACTOR (no chance of a million-dollar payday on the regional boards, I guarantee you). And yet, all I had to do was enter in a dollar figure in an online private loan application and BLAMMO! I was in the Ivy League, literally in a matter of seconds. For 3 years, I was living off of loans from a bank that I never walked into, never met an associate of, never had to prove myself to. It took less than 5 minutes for me to create an account, fill out an application, and be approved for many thousands of dollars. PRESTO! I'm in debt up to my eyeballs for the rest of my life. And I appreciate every penny of it, as the 3 years I spent at Columbia were 3 of the most challenging, rewarding, exciting, difficult, frightening, exhilarating, artistic years of my life. Even if nothing comes of it other than what I've already received, it's worth every penny. However, I don't happen to have any pennies left. And I could have told you that when I applied for those loans. Had a loan counselor sat down with me and asked me how I envisioned my financial future, I would have been able to say little more than, "Well, making a living as an actor is a challenge. I've survived for a good portion of my adult years on little more than my actor's wages, but that didn't cover much more than rent and PB&J. In the future, I expect to make more. Grad school will help me earn more. But theatre is not a steady profession. There are many dry spells. There are many shows that are good for the craft but not good for the paycheck. And there is nothing in the world I would rather do. So, frankly, I don't know how I'll pay back my loans. But I will. Somehow. Someday." Yeah, no loan officer on earth would give wads of money to THAT applicant. But I didn't need to jump through those hoops. I just needed to give my name and social security number and the money was mine, all mine. And I made the most of it, I truly did. And I'll be spending the rest of my life reminding myself that it was all worth it....
Perhaps if I had sat down with a loan officer 3+ years ago, and perhaps if she had responded to my request with the same jaw-dropped, wide-eyed look of shock and horror that met Judy's tractor request, I might have felt silly for even considering such a venture. I might have walked right out of that office and looked for a nice office job somewhere, a job with a bit of security and and a decent wage and heck, even some benefits like health insurance. (Okay, there's no way I would've responded in that way.) Certainly, had I been unable to get the loans, I would not have gone to Columbia. And not knowing what I was missing, I would have been fine, once I got over the heartbreak. And perhaps if I was applying to Columbia next year, I would find myself unable to get a loan, as that seems to be where we're headed. Yes, after decades of thoughtless spending, we are now tightening our purse strings and trying to take some responsibility for all those tractors being driven on our highways by all those unemployed Ivy League actors....
No comments:
Post a Comment