Change is good...and sometimes clunky...

Alright now, I realize that at first blush my prior blog may seem like a piece against the current administration's spending and therefore could be lumped in with all of the Republican blah blah blah. Not so fast. I do think we need change. I do believe that we have a good man in office right now. I do believe the wind is right to sail into new seas...maybe just not in a brand spankin' new boat if the old one still floats. Maybe just get yourself a new sail. (and a pirate flag)

What grinds me is the constant pressure we put ourselves under to buy, buy, buy and do it NOW. A young couple in love used to get hitched, live in squalor for a few wonderfully miserable years while they saved every penny and then, when the piggy bank was ready to burst, went into the local bank and triumphantly hoisted it up onto the counter as a down payment for their first home. It was normally at least 20% of the purchase and the home price would put them into a payment that was around 30% of their monthly income at the time. You drove a car until it either became too small for your growing family or decided to give up its ghost in the driveway some morning. Now most of us are purchasing our first home with 105% financing and never saving a penny...ever...for anything. We never had to so we never learned. We buy a new car because our current one needs a tune up or it no longer matches our wardrobe. We have completely lost the sense to save up for purchases we can't pay cash for and we count on the myth that our children's college tuition money will magically appear in an account we currently have $212.37 in a week before they pack up and leave home. "Sorry Billy, there's always that job selling sweepers and air purifiers until you save up enough to get to school, Mom and Dad were busy supplying you with Wii games, 372 channels of digital cable, $80 jeans and electric scooters the past 18 years."

So in my rambling way I guess what I am saying is that what I am against is not the attempt at getting things moving in the economy by spending money, what I am against is getting the economy of such a specific industry revved up by pulling money, and lots of it, straight out of the wallets of the already strapped and struggling middle class. We are the ones the Clunky plan is targeted at and we are the ones kicking in the cash to make it work. $4500 hasn't bought a new car since before I was born so where do you think the other $15,000 is coming from? We are already expecting too much from the tuition fairy.

I understand that not all the plans the new administration puts in play are going to be perfect right out of the gates and I am wholeheartedly okay with that. I embrace the fact that they are at least trying to do something real and looking at things in a different way. God Bless 'em for it. We need it. I just think that we need to look at the new initiatives from an R&D perspective and be honest with ourselves when they looked better on paper than they do on the road, or in the garage. I find it frustrating that the middle class consumer is tapped to save an industry that has raised the price of a new car over the past 20 years to the point that none of us in the middle class can afford them...honestly with the current economic environment even at $4500 off, we still can't. Or at least shouldn't.


So let's look at this as prototype 1.1, give the administration a good pat on the back for the attempt and let's move on to the next big idea. 1.2 anyone? Anyone?