Needed: Somebody else to pay for my shower
I can’t wait to live in a condo again — because I’m addicted to long, hot showers.
Currently, I own a house and I have to pay for every extra ounce of water I use. In the condo, I will have help.
You see, there are 40 owners in my condo association, so I will pay only one-fortieth of the water bill, the gas to heat it and the sewage to dump it.
The other 39 will cover the rest of my long showers. I will cover only a sliver of theirs — assuming they don’t abuse the privilege the way I will.
Better yet, the homeowners association runs massive industrial gas water heaters, which means I can stay in a lot longer than I can in my house, with its much smaller tank.
How my addiction formed
The reason I’m addicted to long, hot showers traces back to my childhood when long showers were forbidden.
My father had to pay the water bill. Unfortunately for him, his five daughters came of age during the Farrah Fawcett era.
Their hair was long and full. It required special shampoos and conditioners. They spent hours in the shower waiting for the conditioner to penetrate. Our water bills were astronomical.
My mother, desperate to cut down water usage, learned how to work the main water valve in the basement. If we went over our allotted time, she’d shut off the water.
At least once a day, one of my sisters went over her time. She’d stand in the shower shrieking, “Mom, I have conditioner in my hair! Mom, my eyes are burning! Mom, please turn on the water!”
Every once in a while, I’d attempt to sneak a long, hot shower, but my mother always shut off the water.
It was always a helpless, unpleasant experience, but it was the only way she could keep the water bill down.
But when I move back to the condo, I won’t have to worry about high water bills anymore.
When someone else pays the bill
I got to thinking about the concept of other people paying my bills as I stood in a steaming hot shower this morning.
It turns out that my selfishness — my willingness to let others fund my wants and addictions — mirrors what is going on in America.
With the midterm elections weeks away, Democratic candidates are promising to make life more “affordable” — which means they are promising goodies that somebody else will have to pay for.
They are promising to lower the cost of health care, prescription drugs, housing, child care, college and other necessities through subsidies, tax credits, regulation and government spending — the same “solutions” that have helped make most of these things expensive in the first place.
The Democratic Socialists of America go even further. They promise Medicare for All, housing subsidies, free college, rent control and affordable child care — paid for by higher taxes on the rich and more restrictions on landlords, employers and corporations.
The inevitable result of such policies will be less housing, higher rents and fewer jobs — but who cares about actual bad results when free stuff and envy will get people to the voting booth.
Excessive government spending is hardly the domain of Democrats. Republicans are showing tremendous capacity to waste dough, too.
President Donald Trump recently promised every adult American a $5,000 “dividend” if Republicans retain control of Congress — a proposal that could cost more than $1 trillion. Even some Republican senators are asking how they’re supposed to pay for it.
Blame voters
We can fault our politicians for making expensive promises to us and telling us someone else will foot the bill.
But they wouldn’t make outrageous promises if we didn’t accept their bribes.
French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville is often credited with warning about this bribery concept. Historians aren’t sure who first said it, but the line sums up our current state: The American republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
Our politicians long ago began using the public till to bribe voters into voting for them.
And now, to fund hundreds of new bribes, taxes will have to go up. To fund the dozens of unsustainable programs we already have, taxes will have to go up. Economic growth will suffer and, ultimately, everyone will suffer.
But too few seem to care about that. Too many Americans are more interested in the bribes that politicians are promising them than they are about our $40 trillion debt that is already growing at the rate of more than $7 billion every day.
I find the whole concept so unpleasant, I can’t wait to sell my house and move back to my condo so I can take a long, hot shower that other people pay for.
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Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at Tom@TomPurcell.com.
Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, All Rights Reserved. Credit: Cagle.com
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