"Essentially what you are trying to achieve is VAT on housing consumption, but without charging it all up front, like with most goods and services," he says.
Riding around in limousines, showing up late to work, throwing outrageous parties for artists and charging it all to the label, the surprisingly likable Terry finds himself on shaky ground as a corporate realignment threatens to squeeze him out of a job: "If he had signed just one platinum act, all would have been forgiven.
But then you go out for drinks with people from work, and then a couple of nice dinners, and you don't want to look like the cheapskate, so you charge it all to your credit card.
Of the many fault lines in American life — school desegregation, Social Security, guns, immigration, health care policy, abortion — residential desegregation has been so charged it has all but disappeared from view.
Knowing your card limit and the extent that you've already charged it, at all times.
Charge it all to the taxpayer, much tidier and I'll be able to keep an eye on everything.
What I've been thinking about actually is this: What book will our kids write about us? "The Greediest Generation?" "The Complacent Generation?" Or maybe: "The Subprime Generation: How My Parents Bailed Themselves Out for Their Excesses by Charging It All on My Visa Card".
Once you have the ability to charge it, spending is all too seductive.
"Oh, they all charge it," he recalls the teller's saying.
It's minus two, isn't it?" Instead of complicated, patient buildup 10-year-olds stick by the medieval method of kicking the ball as far as possible down field and then all charging after it (all that is save for the goalkeepers, who stand apart and brooding, building up their paranoia).
