Bravo,

A neighbor, call him Steady Eddie, slowed up in his brand-new, two-tone, four-wheel-drive pickup. Steady Eddie just wanted to laugh a little longer as he approached my husband, Bob, who was walking the ground to pick rock before coming onto our field with the planter. Steady Eddie never bothers to pick rock. He clangs and bangs full-tilt over stones and small trees with his brand-new, $6,500 planter. This is rough on machinery, but Steady Eddie doesn’t really own his planter, anyway. He had signed for it the previous fall with a deal that put off the payments for six months, no interest, until his next loan came through, courtesy of the American taxpayers. Without these loans, Steady Eddie couldn’t keep farming because he is handicapped. He has what is known around here as “new-paint disease.” New-paint disease is what keeps a farmer buying great big, brand-new, fancy farm machinery that he doesn’t need, and can’t pay for, because it makes him feel like a hero, high-rolling past the neighbors on the long haul to a 37-acre plot of poor, sandy ground that he can’t afford to farm.

Steady Eddie is not the only farmer in our county who suffers from newpaint disease. Quite a few of them know about all the new government programs before the bureaucrats do, and they line up in front of the farm-loan office the very morning the funds become available. The money, of course, already has been spent. The tax dollars only need be expected to be allocated in order for some debt to crop up to justify the taxpayers’ generosity. A farmer always has some piece of machinery he’s itching to replace or buy outright. New-paint disease is the moral hazard of government loans to farmers. Easy money encourages the overindebtedness it is meant to relieve.

TL

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T. F. Leonard

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A neighbor, call him Steady Eddie, slowed up in his brand-new, two-tone, four-wheel-drive pickup. Steady Eddie just wanted to laugh a little longer as he approached my husband, Bob, who was walking the ground to pick rock before coming onto our field with the planter. Steady Eddie never bothers to pick rock. He clangs and bangs full-tilt over stones and small trees with his brand-new, $6,500 planter. This is rough on machinery, but Steady Eddie doesn’t really own his planter, anyway. He had signed for it the previous fall with a deal that put off the payments for six months, no interest, until his next loan came through, courtesy of the American taxpayers. Without these loans, Steady Eddie couldn’t keep farming because he is handicapped. He has what is known around here as “new-paint disease.” New-paint disease is what keeps a farmer buying great big, brand-new, fancy farm machinery that he doesn’t need, and can’t pay for, because it makes him feel like a hero, high-rolling past the neighbors on the long haul to a 37-acre plot of poor, sandy ground that he can’t afford to farm.

Steady Eddie is not the only farmer in our county who suffers from newpaint disease. Quite a few of them know about all the new government programs before the bureaucrats do, and they line up in front of the farm-loan office the very morning the funds become available. The money, of course, already has been spent. The tax dollars only need be expected to be allocated in order for some debt to crop up to justify the taxpayers’ generosity. A farmer always has some piece of machinery he’s itching to replace or buy outright. New-paint disease is the moral hazard of government loans to farmers. Easy money encourages the overindebtedness it is meant to relieve.