I make it a policy not to buy a new toilet that has a monthly installment payment that is more than what I paid for my first car.

The toilet isn’t just a toilet.

It’s a smart toilet.

And it just isn’t any smart toilet.

It is the top-of-the-line Kohler Numi 2.0 smart toilet.

In Kohler’s own Madison Avenue gibberish:

“The art of the smart toilet.

“Beyond the science and engineering.

“Beyond the personalized bidet setting.

“Beyond the comfort and cleanliness.

“There is, simply, the pure artistry of the Numi 2.0 smart toilet.”

The baby is only $8,628.

It can be yours for only 12 easy payments of $779.

For the record, I paid $750 in 1974 for my aunt’s 1967 Mercury Cougar with 120,000 miles on it.

So what, do you ask, do you get for your 8,629 Benjamins?

—It’s a compact, streamlined one-piece toilet with integrated personal cleansing.

—It has a comfort height feature that offers chair height seating that makes sitting down and standing for most adults.

—Dual flush offers a choice of 0.8 or 1.0 gallons of waste per flush.

—Stainless steel wand offers adjustable spray shape, position, water pressure, temperature, pulsate, and oscillate functions.

—Front and rear wash modules provide warm water for cleansing.

—Self-cleaning function used UV light and electrolyzed water systems to automatically clean the wand surface.

—Motion-activated hands-free opening/closing of seat and cover.

—A trademark Quiet-Close lid and seat prevents slamming.

—Bowl is automatically misted prior to use for more effective rinsing while flushing.

—Heated seat with adjustable temperature setting.

—Warm-air drying system.

—Automatic deodorization system.

—LED lighting illuminates the bowl to serve as a nightlight.

—Power save mode monitors usage and adjusts heated seat and settings to save energy.

—Ambient lighting that doubles as night lighting.

And now for the clinchers.

It has an emergency flush system that supports up to 100 flushes during power outage with simple touch-button activation.

And — are ready for this — a remote control to flush the toilet.

I honestly don’t know where to begin.

Normal toilets don’t need an emergency power supply to flush when the power goes out.

As for the remote control, how hard is it just to remember to flush before you leave the vicinity of the toilet?

The bidet aside, at the end of the day what really does the $8,628 Kohler Numi 2.0 do better than the $99 Glacier Bay model at Home Depot in terms of practical function?

There are light years from an outhouse to indoor plumbing in terms of sanity and comfort.

But from riding a basic porcelain bowl to a smart toilet, the difference is how much money Kohler can convince people with too much of it to give up.

Think about it.

Making things “smart” today means very little increase in function or practicality.

It also means built in obsolescence.

It might surprise you to now that less smart Kohler toilets costing $2,000 to $4,000 don’t have a backup power supply.

Of course, non-smart toilets flush when the power is out.

And when it breaks down, you need a plumber with a masters in electronic engineering.

As for ambivalent lighting and the nightlight, you can save yourself $8,500 and buy a basic Glacier Bay model with a classic cow jumping over the moon night light.

If you think about it, the smart toilet is symbolic of what is wrong with America today.

It’s not overindulgence as much as it is plain laziness and an absurd fascination with gadgets that supposedly simplify your life.

You may not have a $8,628 smart toilet in every bathroom but more than a few households in Manteca and elsewhere have smart refrigerators .

You know the ones. The higher end ones require connection to the cloud via WiFi to make Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg et al even filthier than filthy rich.

They let you use a video screen on the door to see what is inside without opening the door.

You can use the screen to watch TV, call up recipes, or devise virtual replacements for calendars and photos. 

There is also an app to connect with the in-fridge camera so you can use your smartphone to see what is inside.

And there are even smartphone alerts if your smart refrigerator isn’t smart enough to be able to close the door after someone forgets to do so.

Perhaps the most decadent appliance is the smart toaster.

For $349 you can buy a smart toaster to do the same thing to your toast that a $12.99 toaster does.

The big difference is it has a computer chip that allows it do all sort of superfluous things with little, if any, improvement on its basic function except to burn through $330 or so extra dollars.

Most smart appliances — and now smart plumbing — do not improve the process they are designed for beyond what basic electronics brought to the table in terms of energy efficiency, more variable settings and such.

As far as bathroom fixtures, outside of motion detectors to turn on or off water or to flush urinals in public restrooms to conserve water and improve basic sanitary concerns, how does anything get smarter?

And we wonder why it seems we never have money.

That applies to all of us.

We easily spend $500 on a personal computer that includes capabilities many of us don’t utilize such as using it as a phone per se and costs another $50 a month to operate.

And most of the functions aren’t essential.

These are not the ramblings of a

Luddite.

It’s just an observation of what ails us is us.

We moan and groan about how bad we have it.

But in reality, we’re not as a smart as the “smart” appliances or the high tech disciples of the quote attributed to P.T. Barnum that “there’s a sucker born every minute.”

That said, Home Depot will sell you a Numi 2.0 smart toilet from their online store for $8,628.

And my guess at that price, there is probably no delivery charge.