By Selwyn Duke

What many don’t want to mention about our financial crisis is that the greatest culprit is individual irresponsibility.  This is because many of us are part of the problem, and we don’t own up to this for two reasons.  Most obviously, people don’t like to admit fault.  But an even greater factor is that Westerners now have such high expectations for lifestyle, such a feeling of entitlement, that they are usually oblivious to the fact that much of what they demand in life should be considered icing on the cake.  Consequently, they live beyond their means when they otherwise would refrain from many purchases unless they could be financed with disposable income.  Many confuse wants with needs.

A good example of this seems to be an assistant professor of English named Melissa Nicolas, who wrote a piece titled "I Want a Bailout."  It’s basically a rundown of her and her husband’s financial woes rendered with such painful detail that one has to wonder if she isn’t hoping a well-heeled reader will float her a loan.  At the end of the article she mentions that she’d like a bailout à la AIG, and it’s hard to determine if she is being totally sarcastic.

When I write this, it may seem to some that I’m being gratuitously hard on Professor Nicolas, but she decided to air her dirty financial laundry in public, and she serves as a great case study of an important phenomenon. 

At the beginning of the piece, she offers a soon-to-be-elaborated-upon synopsis of her troubles:

My financial crisis started way before the housing bubble burst. I
can trace my fiscal woes back to the day I signed my first tenure-track
contract, signifying that I was going to use my doctorate to become a
professor.

Since that fateful decision, in the fall of 2002, I have declared
bankruptcy, lost a home in a foreclosure/short-sale proceeding, cashed
out three modest retirement plans, and been delinquent on my student
loans.

After this and, to reiterate, a staggering litany of examples of personal economic collapse, she is at a low point in her life but still embraces the following attitude:

"My brother-in-law — a muckety-muck in the corporate world — has been
telling me for six years that I could easily double my salary if I went
into business as a technical writer. I’ve resisted such a move,
believing that being a professor is my vocation."

This will sound very noble to many, but it evidences a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of work and is indicative of askew priorities.

Quite a while ago I watched a documentary about ship-breakers — people who disassemble retired sailing vessels — in Bangladesh, I believe it was.  It’s not glamorous work.  Ship-breaking is big business in that nation, owing to the fact that labor is dirt cheap and regulations, evidently, are non-existent.  The ship-breakers are poor Bangladeshis who show up for work in traditional garb and often with no shoes; unlike the U.S., this is not a country with fat "poor" people.  The huge vessels are sailed in from faraway places and are run right up onto the beach, where these hapless souls commence their arduous task.  The surrounding environment — the beach, the water — is polluted with toxic chemicals from the ships.  And the work is dangerous; some of the men and boys (some might be 13 years old) end up dead or maimed.  As for the dead, their troubles are over; the crippled, though, cannot look forward to much if any health care, let alone the kind that Prof. Nicolas complains is so expensive. 

None of these men and boys do the job for fun.

The same can be said of coal miners in our country.  While they live like kings relative to the people I just described, I’m guessing that they don’t ply the dark depths of the subterranean world because they believe it’s their "vocation."  I could be wrong, of course (I was wrong once seven years ago — it was a traumatic experience), but this is my perception.

Now, there is a saying, "Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life," and it’s a good one.  But such a situation has been enjoyed by only a minuscule percentage of people throughout history; it’s not quite like winning the lottery, but it’s close enough.  Speaking of hitting the jackpot, this is why if the average person did, he would quit his job.  Jobs aren’t synonymous with fun, which is why we have a separate word for fun.  Really.  Check a thesaurus if you don’t believe me.

The problem with Nicolas and countless millions of others today is that they believe you should be able to have your cake and eat it, too.  The attitude is, "Not only should I have a job I find enjoyable and fulfilling, but I should be able to make a lot of money doing it as well."  This is completely unrealistic.  It may be desired by many, but it will be achieved by few.

So, note to Prof. Nicolas: The primary purpose of a job is to support your family.  This means if you have to be a technical writer and not an academic at this time, then that is what you do.  Would you rather work 12 hours a day in the fields for a dollar or be a serf?  This has been the lot of most people throughout the ages (and many today, too), and they made a mere pittance and never even thought about "job fulfillment."  The latter is, madam, a luxury.

Yet, rather than step up to the plate and take such a position, Nicolas preferred to declare bankruptcy and default on her student loans.  This means that the rest of us are, ultimately, paying what she has refused to, but, even so, she complained that the bankruptcy process wasn’t as easy as many think.  I would point out to the professor that at one time she would have been in debtor’s prison or pressed into involuntary servitude. 

While reading Nicolas’ piece, it also seems apparent that she and her husband lived beyond their means.  For instance, she writes:

"Thinking that we were finally coming out of our economic coma, and
expecting our second child, we bought a home. Because we had just filed
for bankruptcy, we had to get a subprime mortgage, but our lender
assured us that we would be able to refinance it to a fixed
conventional mortgage within a two-year period before the loan
adjusted. We took the bait."

Question: Is she a fish?  Or is she a sentient being?  I understand that her Ph.D. isn’t in economics, but it was obvious to me that the time to buy real estate wasn’t when it was at a high.  I didn’t foresee the current crisis, of course, but I did know that the market was cyclical and that real estate was going to be declining in value.  Moreover, if you’ve just been in an "economic coma," isn’t it prudent to live as frugally as possible?  How about renting for a while until the market comes down?  How about tightening your belt all the way around?  I know, I’m a hard man.  I’m an anachronism, really.

Another part of the problem is that people today often assume that an advanced degree should be a ticket to riches.  But doctorates are dispensed more liberally than ever, and they are not immune from the slings and arrows of the law of supply and demand.  English is fine, but it isn’t nuclear physics, and it’s reaching a point at which some Ph.D.s are a dime a dozen.  Lots of people, especially women, get them in disciplines such as sociology, psychology and social work (and some truly ridiculous fields) and then expect doors to fly open.  But, as with anything else, if there are vast numbers of Ph.D.’s, they start to decline in value in the market.  I wonder, has Nicolas ever heard the joke about the doctor who became a plumber?

Professor Nicolas’ may have her sob story, but I’ll save my compassion for people in Bangladesh and the coal miners. 

               © 2008 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved