Goods and Services

The basic data are:
126k - 108k - 8k = 10k

I'm a grammatical conservative. I still believe that plural nouns take a plural verb (go figure), therefore the data are accurate, the media are parasites, and the criteria are vague. If you want to start a fight, go ahead and try to convince me that "the data is wrong," "the media is responsible," or "the criteria is clear." Go ahead.

But that's not what I'm riled up about. What's on my mind is the quantitative value of a house and the privilege to call it home for a while. The housing industry is huge, for the obvious reason that everybody needs one. And while Thoreau harped wisely on the virtue of simplifying the means of one's existence, it's a challenge to say the least.

I'm reading a poem called "Bluesmoon" that a friend wrote and I have tacked on my cubicle wall, a longish poem which concludes,

I listen to the creaking of the shelter
I occupy, abandon, occupy, and learn to call it home.

Remember story problems in your math book? Living in the world is a long series of story problems. After acquiring a little equity by making payments on time, one can refinance a smallish older brick house in Methodistville, Central Swingstate, by borrowing 126 kroner and using 108 of those kroner to pay off the rest of the original loan. It costs around 8 more kroner to pay all the folks who do the paperwork and crunch the numbers and transfer the funds and keep track of the title and taxes and insurance required to live in the house that Jack built. That leaves about 10 kroner for the farmer and his wife to buy several new windows and doors, put a new floor in the bedroom and bathrooms, a few new light fixtures, and pay a couple of other bills.

It's all worth it, especially with the juicy metaphors provided by the finance industry. Gven and I have "locked-in" a slightly lower fixed rate of interest and "cashed-out" some of our equity to fix up the old place. Fix fix. To accomplish that, we played telephone with an inexperienced, illiterate, but well-intentioned finance trainee, and by playing the game by the rules eventually ironed things out. Then we spent a lovely evening sitting across a table at the Sawbuck's on Starmill from a more knowledgable person from the title company, signing documents and drinking green tea. Sign sign. In the meantime, we've employed the know-how of several other skilled professionals who make a living by processing loans to responsible homeowners. Soon some of that money will circulate into the window, door, floor, and fixture industries, nourishing the economic growth that makes this country great.

Again, it's all good. It doesn't mean I love the process, but it's the means to an end, not that the 'end' is truly the end of anything.