This week, we learned that God has a plan and it includes starting a war with Russia. This was also the week we learned that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are Congressional bacon factories. Finally, we learned this week that when you wash Houston, it only gets dirtier.
We're five years into the new Aeon as foretold by George W. Bush in 2003, and so far, it's a roaring success for everyone involved! It's been a success for Bush, who hid the stink of a nascent recession for most of his tenure. And it's been a success for members of Congress, like Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) who took money from the Freddie and Fannie to block regulations that might have slowed profit-taking at the capital giants.
But ownership is about more than just leveraging your house and making a pillow-fort out of the money.
Ownership - as I'm sure economic gurus in the White House would tell you - is about the responsibility that comes from being inextricably entangled in the market system. Once you're in, so goes the reasoning, you have a personal interest in the health of the economy and will work hard and invest carefully. Homeownership is a crucial part of any scheme to make Americans behave like civilized animals. Let's look at the facts:
- Homeownership means having a stake in your community, such as when the Neighborhood Association objects to your xeriscaped lawn and calls the City.
- Owning your home forces taxpayers to think in the long term, and pursue productive careers instead of the happy horseshit American taxpayers are normally liable to do, which would fuck up my investments if they did.
- Owning begins with an "o," which is a very pleasant letter.
- Owning your home provides crucial vitamins and minerals, including 77% of the FDA recommended daily intake of niacin, riboflavin and Vitamin D.,
- Owning provides you with equity, which you can then use for a vacation to distract you from the fact that your job is doomed.
- Children from tract houses have better grades than children from apartment complexes. This is because of special machines in most apartments that pump stupidity into the water supply so that renters won't realize how bankrupt and morally empty their lives are.
Ownership means financial responsibility, which is why Bush promoted those hard, new bankruptcy laws and the law that prohibits people from floating checks, like rent checks, when they're still waiting on payday. This can occur because of the magic than owning creates; when people own more things in their general vicinity, they cheerfully assume the costs in the spirit of communitarian duty. Unless they own stakes in big capital giants, then the community assumes the costs - though largely in the same spirit.
Also, people who own things are more sympathetic to pro-growth policies, like debasing the dollar and cutting taxes for the rich. Because I am undisputed owner of my humble car, I empathise with people who can no longer afford to maintain eight or nine of them at once because of taxes. And because Fannie Mae is doomed to receivership and his severance clause won't activate. And because the parts came from Italy and the exchange rate discount is drying up.
But is there more to the Ownership ideal than just voting Republican and feeling a kinship bond with automobile collectors? Yes, unequivocally yes!
Because the true meaning of Ownership - and here I mean the transcendent meaning - is something far deeper, more significant, more universal and more human than any of the reasons I have vomited in the above paragraphs. It's something that I don't expect small-minded or unpatriotic people to understand. It's just the kind of wavelength you have to be on for the clarity of George W. Bush's moral logic to pierce you through the heart and smite you with love of country. It is this:
Ownership means nobody whose opinion matters ever having to admit that growth isn't Santa Claus. That's because of the triple boon of owning, which is so miraculous that the Pope will soon publish an encyclical including home finance among the aspects of God. Like the Trinity, owning means three magical, unrelated things: (1) the confidence and good faith that comes from knowing you've got yours; (2) legitimacy in quantities so great as to preclude quitting; and (3) lack of time to think any of the implications through completely because you're busy scouring craigslist for second jobs.
Yes, my friends. This is the week in which our system of economics once again banishes naysayers to the outer fringes with a knife. Someday, when we've finished out our sentences and are finally out of debt, we'll look back on this week and say: thank God for Ownership, and thank God for George W. Bush.