Yes, I suppose if we were all highly trained professional couples, one of whom has a secured, high-paying lifelong job with a flexible schedule, we could have all easily saved instead of borrowed over the past few years, and we'd be able to endlessly complain about those other scumbags sucking out our economic lifeblood.
Rather than discuss how idiotic it is to ignore the economic realities of the vast majority of Americans because you've got yours, let's talk about the reasons that the Reynoldses are so successful. The first is education - with two Masters, a J.D., and a Ph.D. between them, the couple is among the educated elite in America. They make gobs of money each year, they have a high degree of security in both of their positions, and multiple income-generating enterprises between them.
The fact that others don't have the financial capability and planning capacity of Glenn and Helen Reynolds isn't an indictment of everyone else's ability to plan as much as it is an indictment of the fact that the kind of great jobs that let you plan like this aren't readily available. I surely wish that the kind of jobs available in my hometown lent themselves to permanent guarantees of employment barring retirement or gross incompetence or unethical behavior. I wish that the kind of jobs generally available to people with high school, associates or bachelors degrees lent themselves to paying speaking engagements, subsidiary radio shows or publishing deals. I can't help but think how great it would be if most of our jobs not only allowed us but were explicitly structured to allow us to pursue outside ventures in prominent and public ways, the nature of which may cause us to say things that our employers are uncomfortable with, but must accept. That jobs like these exist is great, because the people in them often provide vital scholarship and leadership to society.
Unfortunately, most of us work at jobs that allow none of this. But fuck it, because the Reynolds got bank.
