The Parable of the Down-at-Heel and his Stingy Neighbours

There is this gated community. Prosperous, of good repute, the very personification of posh. The Elite Club, it is called, EC for short. You gain admission, you’ve made it. No wonder just joining the waiting list is a badge of honour.

And there was this mildly dilapidated house on its outskirts, whose dwellers yearned to see the EC expand in their direction one day and embrace them into its bosom.

Until one fine day the Insiders, for their own inscrutable reasons, deigned to consider the possibility of their application. The Humble Outsiders were presented with a long list of things they had to do to gain admission. Dig the weeds and trim the lawn, work a bit more and borrow a bit less – and spend even less –, have every member of the household dutifully pay her dues into the household budget, keep everyone from dipping her fingers into the pot and so on. You do all that, show us the numbers, and you’re in.

Well, well, you’ve got a deal! the Outsiders beamed, and retreated to confer in the privacy of their abode. “Borrow less?”, quivered one conferee. “Yes, but you know, once in – wink, wink – you pay a lot less interest,” retorted a sagacious one. Knowing smiles lit up their faces, one by one. Some eyes drifted to the clunker parked outside, seeing it magically transformed into a brand-new convertible. Yes, we can.

So they set about ticking down the items on the list, humming to themselves an old Beatles tune: “Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?” They spruced up the façade, tightened their purse, and generally smartened up. But as the day approached when they were to submit their accounts for perusal, they noted with dismay that the figures still didn’t quite add up. The Outsider household conferred once again. And lo – God bless creativity – in no time they managed to produce the right kind of sums. They duly got a passing grade. They were in.

Boy, did they celebrate. Out went the old clunker, in came the new convertible. Help was hired. Lots of help. The lower interest was a godsend. “The beauty of it,” gushed another former Outsider now also an Insider, “is that you have to toil quite a bit to get in, but once in, you just sit back and enjoy.”

But all good things must come to an end. Maddeningly, just because of some finance mess in another gated community across the water, the bank had the gall to stop all lending to the once-Humble Household. “You have the effrontery of calling our creditworthiness into question? Of us, members of the EC?” they fumed. “Yes, actually, we do,” said the bank.

So the once-Humble-and-now-Errant-Household was faced with two options: tightening its belt mightily, or asking for help to tide them over. “After all, we’re all in this together, aren’t we?” they pleaded. “Some of our Household members have lost their occupation; they are suffering.”

The rest of the EC households groused and grumbled, but in the end they consented. But not without first attaching a stiff list of conditions the Errant Household had to fulfil. Fourteen conditions, to be exact. “Bring your house in order, work a bit longer, stop Household members from shirking their contribution to the common purse, sell that convertible and a couple of other things, get rid of some of the help” and so on.

Four years later, and after receiving help amounting to more than a yearly Household income and having been forgiven a good chunk of its debt, the Errant Household owed far more than before, twice as many Household members had lost their occupation, and the purse was still as good as empty. The solution? They elected a more forceful Household Leader. One who would tell the EC How Things Will Be Done From Now On: “Give us more money, but without the conditions.”

The conditions, you see, are hurting us, explains the New Leader. “That Big Household there, the square one, that’s the one causing our pain. By insisting on those conditions. And being so stingy. In fact, your collective stinginess, your insistence on us being austere, that’s what’s making our life so hard so long now.”

Hold it a second, retort the Other Households. In particular the Big Square One. Out of the fourteen conditions, THIRTEEN haven’t been fulfilled, they sniffily point out: you still haven’t sold that convertible. Or any other thing, for that matter. And you said you’d work longer, but now are cutting back on working time. And no one is paying into the Household purse anymore. And, by the way: it was the bank that imposed the austerity on you, by refusing to grant you any more credit. We have been actually softening the blow. So that you know.

“We might leave you – and go to that other Gated Community over there,” the Leader hints darkly in reply. “The awkward one.”

Silence.

But that, quietly ponder some of the Other Households, might not be such a bad idea after all. Two birds with one stone! It would also serve to weaken the Awkward One.

Homework:

1. Assign country names or economic concepts to the various protagonists and elements of the parable above.

2. Write a likely end.