Dear Editor:
Imagine this scenario: You have a decent income (large, by many
standards), but you have no payroll savings deduction, or even a
savings account at all. Of course you don’t: it takes all you have
just to make the minimum payments on all your loans.
Dear Editor:
Imagine this scenario: You have a decent income (large, by many standards), but you have no payroll savings deduction, or even a savings account at all. Of course you don’t: it takes all you have just to make the minimum payments on all your loans. Most purchases are financed: house, cars, home entertainment system, computers, cell phones, the kids‚ Game Boys.
You know you’ve been neglecting to maintain your home, but there always seems to be something more important, or at least more gratifying, that demands your money.
Suddenly one rainy night, as you’re sitting in your heated massage chair watching your plasma screen and listening to the surround sound, a drop of water plops on your forehead from the leaky roof.
Okay, so you can’t put it off any more. What to do? Your credit cards are maxed out, you can’t get any new ones because you’ve become a bad credit risk, and the leaky roof is just one of many repairs that are desperately needed. You could, you suppose, eat at home, sell that third car, or even (horrors!) go without the cell phones, but why should you? You deserve all of those things!
So you decide to go to your employer and say something on the lines of: “Listen, Rube, I just can’t make it on what you’re paying me. My house is falling apart. How about taking out a loan and giving me the proceeds so I can get things fixed? You can afford it!” What do you suppose your boss would say?
Well, if you pay taxes, this scenario is very close to the truth. YOU are the employer, the free-spending, short-sighted employee is government, and the loans requested are bond measures. Bond measures are the clearest indicators of fiscal mismanagement. Vote NO on all of them!
Rose Burnett, Gilroy
Submitted Saturday, Feb. 21 to ed****@ga****.com
