MAILBAG: It's time to return common sense to our communities

By Candace Dainty, Prairie du Sac

 

"Nothing is as uncommon as common sense." This is another mantra from my father of blessed memory.

My father died in January, 2000. He would have been 93 years old that year. He would have considered himself 93 since his fetal cells were already growing in January, 1907. He always felt his life began the day he was conceived. To him, it was just ‘common sense’ that life began at the beginning.

Today we are struggling with the loss of common sense. We spend money like a "drunken sailor," or more like people who come by it too easily.

Those who have not worked for it, expect it no matter what. The rest of us, who work hard, are lured into easy payment plans and glamour.

We’ve become attracted by a fantasyland of big houses, fancy cars and credit cards.

I’ve been trying to figure out when common sense left us, or rather, when we left common sense.

My father always put away money, every paycheck. He believed in planning for the future. In October 1962, he paid cash for his 1963 Plymouth Belvedere station wagon. He still owned that car the day he died, 200,000 miles later.

Common sense says you don’t buy something you can’t pay for in cash. The only loan he had was the mortgage on the house shared by him and my mother, now also of blessed memory.

He did not have any kind of pension when he retired in 1972. My parents’ only income was the pittance of his Social Security and what they had saved. How many of us can say the same thing now?

Our country is on the brink of spending a trillion dollars or more on national health care. Where will the money come from? It does not grow on trees. Every time the government adds expenses, we have to pay. It’s only common sense.

 A while back I said this administration will make the wealthy poor, and the poor slaves. Nothing has changed.

 I keep saying we need history lessons.

People, pick up a history book. Study what happened in places like Germany in the 1930s and on. Understand we can’t get this stuff for free. Someone always pays. Eventually everyone pays.

You may resent the wealthy because you think they are taking from you. Consider though, where you’d be without the businesses and factories they have built. Where would you make the money for your groceries, your churches, charities?

The ingenuity that has driven them has provided you with jobs and your community with wealth.

It’s only common sense.