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BAILING YOURSELF OUT by Ben Stein

Here is some good news and some bad news. I’ll give you the bad news first.

I was on a panel of smart, pleasant men and women last week, discussing the economy and, in particular, how it is affecting people selling vehicles with tires and wheels. I told the audience that the Federal Reserve, which has unlimited power to print money, had a program called the Term Asset Backed Lending Facility (TALF) that would help dealers restock their showrooms. I said I knew it hadn’t started yet but I thought it would start soon.

A gentleman on the panel — an intelligent, articulate, honest young man — said that, as a Fed employee himself, he knew the Fed was straining every nerve to get the TALF started. He said they are pulling people off their trucks who used to work on delivering cash to banks. That’s how hard they are working.

Friends and Internet neighbors, I felt like weeping. As I said to this man, “I know this isn’t your fault. But the Fed has an unlimited budget. They could hire some of the tens of thousands of young bankers recently laid off on Wall Street to get this program started. It needs to be started YESTERDAY! Why aren’t they getting professional bankers instead of people who work in trucking to do this?”

It’s Called ‘Government’ for a Reason

The man pleasantly said that legislators were always criticizing the Fed’s budget and so they had to be careful where they spent their money. This is an entity that has genuinely unlimited money. And people selling cars, trucks, and trailers are bleeding without that TALF facility — and some will die.

Anyhow, as I listened to that man, I thought, “Hey, why am I surprised? It’s called ‘the government’ for a reason. It has its own pace and its own ideas of what’s right and wrong.’”

Now that’s the bad news.

You have been — you are now — bombarded every day with TV shows, radio news, and newspapers telling you of this government support plan and that government support plan and how they are going to rescue you. To which I can only say, when you hear the word ‘government,’ in your mind, substitute the words ‘Department of Motor Vehicles.’ When was the last time they rescued you? When was the last time they bailed you out of anything at all?

Look, I worked for the government for many years. The men and women I worked with were some of the finest people on this earth. But there are only a few of them and a lot of us. They have their hands full. Yes, they can help you by mailing you a check. They can help you by cutting your taxes, and I hope they do. They can “bail out” specific industries for a while, such as we just saw with Detroit.

They definitely help you by fighting for your freedom.

But to expect that ‘government’ is a fairy godmother who will rescue you from your problems over any long period is just fantasy. Here’s the good news: This country will be rescued by each of us doing what we can do in our own individual sphere of action as government works in its sphere of action. There are roughly 142 million men and women in the labor force. Their ingenuity, flexibility, energy, and confidence will make more difference than anything government does on an individual basis — which is not to take away a thing from the effects of good policy.

In the free society, we rescue ourselves. I think in particular of a young man who graduated from Williams College in 1935. It was hard times, with almost 20 percent unemployment, as we now know.

The young man had no money and few connections. But he didn’t know what he didn’t have, and he didn’t know how deep the Depression was. So he just went out, got a teaching job in Iowa, used the money to work and study at The University of Chicago, found a wife, and started a career that took him to fame and prosperity. He didn’t count on anyone else to do it for him. He was a Phi Beta Kappa from a great college, but he didn’t hesitate to wash dishes for a meal and a quarter.

That man was my father.

I think of Herbert Hoover, who graduated from mining engineering school in the late 1880s. Just as he was entering the labor force in 1893, a huge Depression hit. But he didn’t know about it because there were few statistics, so he headed out West, started a mining enterprise, and became a millionaire.

Put Down the Paper and Get to Work

If you spend the day reading about how bad things are, you will never get out of bed. If you put down the paper and get to work, and then work twice as hard and twice as smart as you used to, and maybe take less pay right up front, you will get ahead.

Here is a lesson from my father: In every economic era, there is always a shortage of talented, creative, well-educated workers. Be one of those workers.

I think of my pal Barron Thomas, a talented salesman of airplanes and related items and services. Since the recession hit in earnest in the fall, I hardly get to talk to him. Why? Because he works all the time. He makes the deals the other guys are too lazy or short-sighted to make. If you absolutely, positively want it to be sold, if you want to buy at the best price, you go to Barron Thomas. The flight world knows it, and he gets sales. Plus, he doesn’t get depressed, because he’s working too hard to get depressed. He gets that endorphin rush, that glorious feeling of self-esteem one gets from working hard and being exhausted at the end of a successful day.

My point isn’t to plug Barron. He’s got a huge reputation already. My point is to tell you that the hard-working people will still get work. They will have money to spend. They will spend it, and eventually it will pull us out of this darned recession.

Earn Your Success

I think of Henry Luce, who started ‘Fortune’ magazine when the Great Depression was well under way, or Bill Benton, who started one of the most successful ad agencies of all time, Benton & Bowles, during the Depression. They didn’t expect a bailout. They expected to earn their success — and they did.

Imagination, hard work, and persistence can conquer any phase of the business cycle. Imitate Mr. Thomas, Mr.Bowles, and Mr. Luce. Let other people get depressed by the headlines. Let other people wait around for Mr. Obama to rescue them. You go out and go to work, using every resource of energy and imagination you have. The DMV is not going to bail you out. By and large, and with a few exceptions, you have to bail yourself out.

Get to work.

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today’s World?

 For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called “Monday Night At Morton’s.” (Morton’s is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Benis terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. ?Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

 Ben Stein’s Last Column…

 How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today’s World?

 As I begin to write this, I “slug” it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is “eonlineFINAL,” and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

 It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world’s change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton’s, whil e better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton’s is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

 Beyond that, a bigger change has happened.? I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

 How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figur e wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today’s world, if by a “star” we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

 They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

 A real star is the U.S.soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He appr oached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

 A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

 The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

 We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

 I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton’s is a big subject.

 There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament…the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

 Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

 I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin..or Martin Mull or Fred Willard–or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

 But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister’s help). I cared for and paid attention to them in th eir declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

 This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

 Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
 By Ben Stein