A Nation of Moochers
Read A Nation of Moochers Online
Authors: Charles J. Sykes
For my little Frenchman, Elliott
Contents
Part One:
Moocher Nation
Chapter 1.
A Nation of Moochers
Chapter 2.
Have We Reached the Tipping Point?
Part Two:
The Joys of Dependency
Chapter 3.
The Rise of Moocher Nation
Chapter 4.
The Joys of Dependency
The Kindness of Strangers (A Moocher Manifesto)
Chapter 5.
Addicted to OPM (Other People’s Money)
Chapter 6.
Feed Me
Part Three:
At the Trough
Chapter 7.
Harvesting OPM
Chapter 8.
Crony Capitalism (Big Business at the Trough)
Chapter 9.
The Two Americas
Part Four:
Bailout Madness
Chapter 10.
Mortgage Madness
Chapter 11.
Bailouts for Idiots (How to Make Out Big by Screwing Up)
Chapter 12.
Walk Away from Your Mortgage!
An Interactive Reader’s Exercise
Chapter 13.
No, They Didn’t Learn Anything
Part Five:
Middle-Class Suckers
Chapter 14.
The Bank of Mom and Dad
Chapter 15.
Middle-Class Suckers
Chapter 16.
Why Get a Job?
Chapter 17.
Mooching Off the Kids
Part Six:
What’s Fair?
An Abbreviated History of Mooching
Chapter 18.
We’re All from Starnesville Now
Chapter 19.
What’s Fair?
Chapter 20.
Step Away from the Trough
Preface
Mooch: verb
—
he was always mooching money from us:
beg, ask for money, borrow;
informal:
scrounge, bum, sponge, cadge.
noun
—
she is such a mooch:
beggar;
informal:
bum, scrounger, cadger, freeloader, moocher.
(
Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus
)
Why “moochers”?
The title of this book could have been
Tin Cup Nation,
or
A Nation of Freeloaders
. This could have been a book about “dependency” or the “culture of entitlement.”
But “moocher”—in all its anachronistic glory—perfectly captures the new culture of bailouts and irresponsible grasping, everything from corporations feeding at the trough to the permanent “victims” of Hurricane Katrina. Appropriately pejorative and judgmental, “moocher” is so old, it is fresh again. What it lacks in sophistication, it more than makes up for with its bracing bluntness. The next time you are at a cocktail party and a corporate CEO brags about his latest bit of government pork, try responding: “In other words, you are a moocher.” You may ruin the party, but you will have effectively cut through an awful lot of euphemism and rationalization.
Befitting the times, “moocher” is already making a comeback. Ayn Rand’s use of “moochers and looters” has gained new currency in the era of the Tea Party. Humorist P. J. O’Rourke titled his paean to Tax Day 2009 “A Nation of Moochers”
1
; syndicated talk-show host Neal Boortz has both talked and written extensively about the “moocher class”; and
Forbes
magazine recently introduced what it called the “moocher ratio” to measure the degree of dependence on government.
2
I hope this book will make a modest contribution in restoring the word to its rightful place in the American lexicon.
Part One
MOOCHER NATION
Scenes from Moocher Nation
Mankind soon learns to make interested uses of every right and power which they possess or may assume. The public money and public liberty … will soon be discovered to be sources of wealth and dominion to those who hold them; distinguished, too, by this tempting circumstance: that they are the instrument as well as the object of acquisition. With money we will get men, said Caesar, and with men we will get money.… [Our] assembly should look forward to the time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price.
—Thomas Jefferson,
Notes on Virginia,
1782
Q:
Why are you here?
A:
To get some money.
Q:
What kind of money?
A:
Obama money.
Q:
Where’s it coming from?
A:
Obama.
Q:
And where did Obama get it?
A:
I don’t know, his stash.… I don’t know; I don’t know where he got it from. But’s he giving it to us. To help us. We love him. That’s why we voted for him.
—Detroit, October 7, 2009, where thousands of residents turned out for free government money. According to the Associated Press, they were supposed to apply for federal antihomelessness grants, but many were under the impression they were registering for $3,000 checks from the Obama administration.
At the meeting, it was hard to discern where concerns over AIG’s collapse ended and concern for Goldman Sachs began: Among the 40 or so people in attendance, Goldman Sachs was on every side of the large conference table, with “triple” the number of representatives as other banks, says another person who was there.…
The Goldman domination of the meetings might not have raised eyebrows if a private solution had been forthcoming.…
Of the $52 billion paid to AIG’s counterparties, Goldman Sachs was the biggest recipient: $13 billion, the entire balance of its claim.
—
New York
magazine
1
On Wednesday, 30,000 people suffered through hours in the hot sun, angry flare-ups in the crowd and lots of frustration and confusion for a chance to receive a government-subsidized apartment.
The massive event sometimes descended into a chaotic mob scene filled with anger and impatience.
—
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
2
At 300 East 23rd Street in the exclusive Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan, a new 98-unit luxury apartment complex has been built with an outdoor movie theater and panoramic city views. The problem is that not enough buyers are coughing up the $820,000 to $3 million the project’s developers are asking for the privilege to own a unit in the building.… Last December, the Federal Housing Administration loosened its financing rules so that U.S. taxpayers would have the honor of backing loans with down payments as low as 3.5%. Now rich Manhattanites can better afford condos in buildings with pet spas, concierges and rooftop lounges like the one in Gramercy Park, all on the taxpayers’ dime.
—The Heritage Foundation
3
More than $69 million in California welfare money, meant to help the needy pay their rent and clothe their children, has been spent or withdrawn outside the state in recent years, including millions in Las Vegas, hundreds of thousands in Hawaii and thousands on cruise ships sailing from Miami.
—
Los Angeles Times
4
In Wilkinson County, Miss., a home has been flooded 34 times since 1978.…
The home’s value is $69,900. Yet the total insurance payments are nearly 10 times that: $663,000.…
The insurer? The federal government.…
In Fairhope, Ala., the owner of a $153,000 house has received $2.3 million in claims. A $116,000 Houston home has received $1.6 million.
—
USA Today
5
A federal program designed to help impoverished families heat and cool their homes wasted more than $100 million paying the electric bills of thousands of applicants who were dead, in prison or living in million-dollar mansions, according to a government investigation.…
Illinois paid $840 toward energy bills for a U.S. Postal Service employee who fraudulently reported zero income even though she earned about $80,000 per year.
“Times are tough and I needed the money,” she told investigators.
—Associated Press
6
El Campo, Tex.—Even though Donald R. Matthews put his sprawling new residence in the heart of rice country, he is no farmer.… Yet under a federal agriculture program approved by Congress, his 18-acre suburban lot receives about $1,300 in annual “direct payments,” because years ago the land was used to grow rice.
Matthews is not alone. Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all.…
—
The Washington Post
7
