Ask Mr. Smartypants

It was the voice of my father that made me hit the streets with Quinn to hawk Sally Foster gift wrap, night lights, chocolate dreidels and various holiday items.

Ghosts are so disappointing that way: You want them to tell you who's going to win the Super Bowl or howl, "Go short on mortgage derivatives and you'll be eating grilled shrimp the size of schnauzers!" but instead they whisper, "Get off your butt and help your daughter."

I have railed against fundraising extortion for years, arguing that I'd rather see money raised for schools go to … well, schools, rather than orange merchants, doughnut bakers, candle makers, gift wrap manufacturers or even dreidel dippers.

But Quinn dreamed she would sell enough Sally Foster to win a ride in a limousine and an invite to the big bowling party. I thought I could weasel out by saying, "Honey, if you want to do that, I'll help you, but it's going to take hours and hours, day after day, of going around the neighborhood ringing bells and begging strangers for money."

Although that sounded like hell on Earth to me, it fazed her not at all.

"What if my loyal readers see me following Quinn as she hawks her wares and brand me a hypocrite?" I asked my wife.

"What, both of them?" Angela answered. "I think they'll understand. I don't think of your 'loyal readers' as finicky."

In the end, I couldn't say no, because of what my dad did for me the summer I was 14.

I got a job landscaping at an apartment complex, and my father said, "Any job you're willing to work at, I'll drop you off and pick you up at."

Then, because I am the kind of person who believes anything worth doing is worth doing to the point of hospitalization, I found a night job to go along my day job, cooking and washing dishes at a restaurant called Zorbas.

So my father ended up taking me to landscape at 7:30 a.m. (and going in to work himself an hour early), picking me up at 3:30 in the afternoon and eating his lunch at home while I showered, dropping me off at Zorbas, going back to work, then picking me up again around midnight.

I developed the habit of working long hours and multiple jobs, while the money I earned helped me develop some other, less admirable habits.

But the tendency to work multiple jobs and long hours stuck.

There was a period when "hard worker" was my only good quality (unless you count my lovely speaking voice), and I clung to it, and knew where it came from.

So how was I going to tell Quinn I wouldn't follow her around the neighborhood and watch her knock on doors?

As it turned out, we had fun, largely because she thought ringing bells, meeting new people, going in their homes and playing with their dogs was awesome. Her dedication was, for a 7-year-old, astonishing: On our longest day, she led me around the neighborhood for nearly five hours: Over a period of three weeks, she made more than 200 house calls.

And she earned her limo ride and bowling party and a serious sense of reward for a job well done that, hopefully, will resonate with her for a lifetime.

It was a gift from her grandfather, one of many he would have been delighted to give her, had they met.

Those of you following the news this week know there has been a mighty wallop of chaos in the stock market in particular and the economy in general.

Along with the news has come analysis, heavy on terms like "quantitative decline," "long-term derivative hedges" and "copious weeping." It's my job to cut through all that malarkey, or at the very least, substitute my own, funnier malarkey.

Here, then, is everything you need to know about the economic crisis:

Is now the time to panic?

No. Panic is an instinct humans possess that gives them the strength or speed to escape from dangerous situations.

The time to panic was six months ago, when you could have sold your house and stocks and gotten enough money to buy something useful in the case of a societal meltdown, such as Spam or guns.

The moment for useful panic having passed, now is the time to wail, seethe with resentment, alienate spouses with snide remarks like "I told you we needed to save our money, but you had to spoil the kids with fresh produce and milk" and peruse cult pamphlets.

"This one says the world will end in nine months, in a hail of fire, honey. If that's true, we have enough in the 401(k) for a nice Christmas, but if not, it's going to be coal in the stockings. For the good kids. The bad kids are getting bellybutton lint. And an itemized bill."

Are the fundamental pieces

of our economy sound?

Yes, if you're referring to Internet smut, celebrity magazines, clothes emblazoned with edgy slogans and recreational drug sales. In an economy where the automotive industry, housing market, financial sector and heavy manufacturing have collapsed, these industries will now be the engines that drive our financial future.

While it will take some adjustment, there is an upside: Most people only need one car or home, but the demand for new celebrity magazines, fresh smut, the hippest counterculture garb and, of course, cocaine, are constant, so the new economy, though disgusting and pointless, might lack cyclical downturns.

Where will my money be safest?

Most people are keeping their nest eggs in their ceramic "Bullwinkle" change jar, or in the case of those who still have folding money, their bras and socks. If you have money to invest, experts generally recommend government-issued savings bonds and Treasury bills in times of market unrest.

Now that might not be such a good idea, because much of the market unrest is because of the fact that every time a big finance-sector entity has a problem, the feds try to hide the company under a huge pile of freshly minted billion-

dollar bills (which, oddly, feature a picture of Alfred E. Newman).

Because of that, dollars and government bonds will be useful only for buying Baltic Avenue and building tiny green houses.

So a new strategy is called for - an innovative plan, a cutting-edge vision for the future.

Personally, I'm probably leaning toward starting an ultra-cool clothing company. How's this for starters?

"My bank went bust, my job went to China, my pension fund went bankrupt, my car ran out of gas, my federal government went crazy, and all I got was this stupid T-shirt."

Reassessment notices have gone out, and folks are irate, convinced their new, higher value will lead to big-government socialism. They're throwing around the expression, "I'm on a fixed income," (and really, who isn't?) and mumbling about the fat cats down at the county and their free-spending ways.

"Why do the deputies need brand-new bullets? Why can't they recycle?" they say. "And why do they need luxurious cruisers, when we could get 1984 Chevettes so cheap?"

Assessing property value is a controversial process. Here in South Carolina, the process manages to be controversial without being fair. Since the increase in assessment is limited to 15 percent every five years, and residential real estate generally appreciates faster than that, folks in newly purchased homes assessed at their full value pay a disproportionate share of the taxes.

And property owners are never happy. We want a low value so we don't have to pay much, but we want a high value so we feel secure in the belief our house is worth enough to trade it for a new spleen if Medicare disappears.

There is a method of assessing property that is utterly, inarguably fair. Once I explain it to you, you will look across the breakfast table at your spouse and say, "Holy guacamole, Honeybubbles, listen to this." You will even feel the urge to tell people I am smart.

Resist that foolish (and rare) urge, because the idea is Robert Heinlein's.

Heinlein, often referred to as the "Dean of Science Fiction," wrote extensively about freedom, economics and the meaning of personal and societal responsibility.

Here's his assessment plan:

You decide how much your own property is worth, and you pay taxes on that amount. It's entirely up to you. The catch? I can buy your property any time I want, for the exact value you assign it.

In other words, your house is assessed at the price you'd take for it, which is a fairly exact definition of "value."

Let's say I think my house is worth $100,000. I would probably assess it at about $110,000. If you want to buy it for that price, I'll pack as fast as I can and sweeten the deal by offering to leave behind all Quinn's stuffed animals, Angela's old magazines and our family photo albums. As long as no one wants to buy, I'll pay taxes on a value of $110,000, and adjust it every year as I see fit, when I send in my check. The system works equally well for cars, boats and planes.

The system also works well in the case of eminent domain, because if the government demands my land in order to build a monorail from the east side to Target (another awesome idea of mine), there is already a fair value determined for the property.

You can say the system doesn't take into account the emotional attachment you might have to your home, but you would simply have to assign a value to that attachment, and pay taxes on that value.

If you don't like the sound of this system, you're not seeking fairness. You're just seeking lower taxes for yourself, at the expense of your neighbor.

When it comes to household chores, I am constantly looking for credit, even though I haven't earned any.

I am always just on the verge of doing stuff, poised at the edge of helpfulness, but my wife is so disciplined and resolute in handling chores that she gets them done before I have worked up the proper motivation to lend a hand.

I tend to walk up on Angela just as she's finishing polishing the kitchen to a high gloss and say, "Gosh, Sugarknees, I would have done that."

Angela: "I don't mind."

Lane: "I know, but I would have been glad to clean up the kitchen and the dinner stuff.

"Really, I planned to. What I'm saying is that I was so completely willing to do it that it's actually as if I did do it. Spiritually, I cleaned the kitchen. No need to thank me, but you can if you want."

Angela: "When would you have been glad to do all this?"

Me: "Huh?"

Angela: "We finished dinner two hours ago. I just now got to the kitchen because I've been folding laundry, ironing, overseeing homework and bathing the small child.

"When, exactly, would you have been glad to do the kitchen? And where have you been?"

Me: "Oh, I … it's complicated, but I needed to watch baseball for the government. I'm really not supposed to talk about it. But just so you know, I would have been happy to fold the laundry, iron, oversee homework and bathe the small child, also. It's actually hilarious that you did all that, because I was just about to knock it out. Do you see the hilarity in that? Honey?"

While I like to take credit for chores I haven't done after they're completed, my wife likes to grab kudos for jobs she's completely unwilling to tackle, even before I do them.

Angela: "Did you want me to take the pickax and chop out those red-tip stumps, or were you going to do it? Because I don't mind. I think the pickax is too heavy for me to swing, or even pick up, but I could kind of rub it against the stumps and maybe scrape them away. I'll try to be real quiet, in case you want to take a nap while I work."

Me: "No, I'll take care of it."

Angela: "I really don't mind. I mean, if you want to do the stumps, I'll shop for groceries, put them away, do the floors, bake one of those apple cakes you love, put Quinn to bed, take a bubble bath, put on something lacy, drink two glasses of wine, light candles and throw some Marvin Gaye on the stereo. Or I could hack stumps. It's your call."

And then when I'm out back chopping the stumps, she'll call out from the porch: "Did you want me to pull up that poison ivy, or were you going to get it when you're done with the stumps? I'm pretty allergic. I'll probably blow up like a puffer fish and die, but I don't mind, if you're too tired."

Me: "No, I'll do it. I kind of look like a puffer fish anyway, and I have more life insurance than you (mumbling). And less desire to live."

Truth is, I should have offered to be the one to take a bubble bath, put on something lacy and light the candles.

I would have been happy to do it.