Creeping socialism nipped in bud
It’s a generally accepted rule in civilized society that when you come upon kids selling lemonade in their yard, it’s not cool to yell at the children. (Generally. I’m looking at you, my childhood neighbors.)
No one, apparently, let Chicago Sun-Times columnist Terry Savage in on this little social norm, as she devoted her July 5 column to bashing a few local kids who – I’ll pause to let you sit down – decided to give away their lemonade instead of charging a quarter or two for it. And to make things better (better for me to mock her, that is) she apparently wants her readers to be proud of her for it.
As Savage details it in her weekly finance column (emphasis mine), she was riding in the backseat of her brother’s car through their “upscale neighborhood on a hot summer day.” They stop by a homemade lemonade stand because the Savage family, she informs us, make it a point to reward “kids who are entrepreneurial enough to open up a little business.”
Soon enough, however, the three young girls managed to morally offend Savage. When asked how much the lemonade or the candy bars cost, the girls told Savage’s brother that everything was free. “I sat in the back seat in shock,” Savage wrote.
As Savage reeled in the backseat, things started to get ugly when her brother’s fiancee had the common sense – er, I mean socialistic tendency – to suggest the girls were “cute” and they had the “spirit of giving.”
“That really set me off, as my regular readers can imagine,” Savage wrote. (I guess we’re to assume her regular readers are used to her flying off the handle at sweet children?) First up on the Savage Lecture Tour was the fiancee, who got an earful from the crazy lady in the backseat.
“That’s not the spirit of giving,” Savage “exclaimed” at her future sister-in-law. “You can only really give when you give something you own. They’re giving away their parents’ things – the lemonade, cups, candy. It’s not theirs to give.”
(‘Cause, you know, isn’t it about time someone set straight the rules of ownership between parents and their grade school brood?)
Having successfully verbally disemboweled her brother’s fiancee for assuming the best about children, Savage then rolled down the backseat window and stuck her head out to address the trio of tykes in order to – again, her words – “set them straight.”
“You must charge something for the lemonade,” she quoted herself as telling them. “That’s the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs – how much the lemonade costs, and the cups – and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money.”
(You know, because most childhood lemonade stands are really all about profit.)
After that talking-to, Savage writes she felt she had made her point until her brother piped up an order of raspberry lemonade to break “the tension.” (I think you’ve got to start questioning yourself when you cause “tension” at neighborhood lemonade stands.) To Savage’s chagrin, the little girls once again told him it was free, which meant, to her addled brain, their little lemonade stand was exactly why “America is getting it all wrong when it comes to government, and taxes, and policy.”
Savage spends a few paragraphs unpacking that rabid jump in logic, but I’ll spare you. In fact, the caption under the file photo of lemonade that accompanies the column sums up the (insane) argument most succinctly: “Three girls giving away free lemonade isn’t cute, it’s indicative of the lack of economic responsibility we’re passing on to future generations.”
Riiiiiiiight.
If you permit me, I think a major newspaper’s finance columnist berating children from the backseat of a car about how they run their lemonade stand is indicative of psychosis. (See, I made a concise summary of my point and didn’t even need a photo caption to do it, Savage.)
According to objective sources like TerrySavage.com, Savage is a “nationally known expert on personal finance and a regular television commentator on issues related to investing and financial markets.” In that case, maybe next she’ll tackle the “troubling trend” of children eating their parents’ food and sleeping under their parents’ roof without ever chipping in for any of it.
With scumbag, good-for-nuthin kids like that running around, no wonder the job market is in the tank, you know?
If you’d like to send him some free lemonade, Brandon Szuminsky can be reached at bszuminsky@heraldstandard.com.