Ben Stein is Disconnected from Reality

In this piece, called "Everybody's Business," Ben Stein showcases how insulated the wealthy can be from the rest of society. Consider the account of his friend:

She lives in a lovely home in a stylish inland enclave. It has an interest-only mortgage of about $2.2 million that requires a payment of $12,000 a month, very roughly. It was last appraised at $2.7 million, but who knows if it’s now worth anything remotely close to that price.

The woman...has no job or other remunerative employment. She has a former husband, an entrepreneur whose business has suffered recently. He pays her $20,000 a month, of which roughly half is alimony and half child support. The alimony is scheduled to stop this summer.

She has a wealthy beau who pays her credit card bills and other incidentals, but she is thinking of telling him she is through with him. She has no savings and has refinanced her home repeatedly, always adding to indebtedness and then putting the money into a shop she owns that has never come close to earning a dime. Now she is up all night worrying about money. “Terrified,” as she put it.

What a typical American tragedy! A modern day Grapes of Wrath, really. Is there no justice?

A grown woman has absolutely no job skills, but runs a shop because that's what she read that's what self-actualized modern women do. She has an "interest only mortgage," and let's be frank: an interest-only mortgage is not a real mortgage, because you don't actually build up any equity in your house. It's a 30-year lease, and it's an amazingly stupid thing to do unless you're desperate. The only reason it exists is an idiotic fluke in the income tax code that lets you deduct mortgage interest payments but not rental payments.

This lady lives mainly off of $20,000 of alimony and child-support from her wealthy ex-husband, but in a shocking turn of events that she knew was going to happen for some time, the alimony is ending. The rest of her income, which is spent on "incidentals," comes from a different rich man in her life, who pays off her credit card every month. However, she does not fancy him so much lately. Also, she has refinanced her house and accumulated a ton of debt.

These are the sobering problems that Americans face each and every day in this wintry economic climate. Across America, alimony is ending and people want to break up with their rich boyfriends. Hundreds of millions of Americans risk losing the basic shelter of a $2 million house in a stylish inland enclave. It's easy to dismiss the plight of the handicapped, the ignorant, the poor, the drug-addicted, but when not even your stylish inland enclave is safe, then it's "Everybody's Business."

Why does the Times let Ben Stein write a column? He writes about economics, generally, but he is not an economist, or a broker, or a businessman, or a personal finance adviser. It's from his perch as speechwriter and novelty actor/endorser, that he gets the authority to doll out profound nuggets of wisdom like:

I have been pondering what advice to give them about money. What I keep coming up with is this: Do not act like typical Americans.

Don't act like typical Americans? Check!