Word: loman
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...made the last payment on the house I today," cries Willy Loman's widow at the conclusion of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. "We're free and clear." Many Americans still consider owning a home a virtual birthright, as well as a necessary inflation hedge. But today people are being forced to find ingenious and complex schemes to beat the high cost of achieving Loman's dream...
Today's high cost of borrowing has made the conventional longterm, fixed-rate mortgage as old-fashioned as Willy Loman's Studebaker. Virtually all banks in California stopped making such loans last fall. Hundreds of thousands of would-be buyers now simply cannot afford the big down payment or steep monthly charges involved in those loans. Herman J. Smith, president of the National Association of Home Builders, says that only about 4% of first-time home buyers can qualify for a 15% mortgage on a median-priced house. Therefore, people are turning to so-called creative home financing...
When Staff Sergeant Louis Loman, 33, joined the Air Force in 1971, he did so mainly for one reason: job security. He had just been laid off as a mechanic at a paper mill in Hamilton, Ohio, and he never wanted to face such hard times again. Now he is undecided about signing up for another tour of duty in 1981. "I like my job," says Loman, a B-52 air craft mechanic. "I don't want to get out. But I've got to go where the money is to make a living for my family...
...Loman, the money is clearly not in the U.S.A.F. He takes home $550 monthly, and his family - Wife Pat and two children - squeaked by on food stamps until Pat took a job as a sales clerk at a nearby department store. He had to put 180,000 miles on his 1969 Plymouth before selling it last November - and then could only afford a used 1973 Chevy. He and his family live on base because he cannot afford to buy a house. Says Loman: "I'm missing the American dream by serving in the American Air Force...
...Loman is also worried about certain aspects of his job. "In the last couple of years, we've had to maintain our B-52s on cannibal status - borrowing parts from some so others could fly. I used to be able to get a certain bolt right away, but now it takes as long as three weeks. Standards are still met, but it's getting harder to meet them." He worries about the new recruits ("They just can't hack it") and thinks the Air Force is losing too many skilled mechanics too fast, thereby burdening those...