Why the recession wont end any time soon according to my own simple logic
One of my morning joys is to wake up to a fresh pot of coffee and sit down in my robe to watch clips from CNN on the media center. In the evenings, I tend to roll over articles and posts on Google Reader to see what’s going on in the world.
In the economy section of news sites, you often see conflicting stories of how long before the big bad recession ends. Perhaps ‘this well respected bank CEO’ thinks that we will pull out in the third quarter. Then you read that ‘this British official, on the heals of new unemployment data, thinks we have the worst to come. I have some custom news sections set up with Google News. I chose the words ‘recession’ and ‘depression’. There is constant conflicting news. It’s interesting to read how short sited the news is.
Most people believe the recession will simply ‘go away’ if they ride it out long enough.
In my mind, all that news from the national media is hogwash. You have to pay closer attention to the social aspects of society. What we have right now is a whole country full of people who are living beyond their means. Our government is doing the same. Our people and leaders do not want to believe the following:
- That they will have to reduce their standard of living
- That they will have to practice conservation
- That they will have to get smarter in order to compete.
- That they will have to cooperate
We have a massive complacency here. Everybody thinks that there is money hiding someplace. Look at California. Governor Schwarzenegger is standing up at a press conference saying, “Look, there is no more money. We can’t print money like Washington. We simply cannot make the budget without making cuts.” But, nobody want’s to hear it. People are like, “Don’t tax me.” and “Don’t cut my program.” Self-responsibility is virtually non-existent anymore.
The big clincher that I don’t think anybody in America understands. People live much cheaper in other countries.
I have a language partner in China who talks with my on Skype often. One day we got to talking about how much money we spend on food. I was asking him how much his mom spent on food for the day to feed the family and he said, “around 40 RMB” which is about $5 bucks per day. Most fat ass Americans will spend that on lunch for themselves. That’s a point where Americans just don’t get it. The Chinese, Indians, and other parts of Asia are now competing with us on a global scale. They can work cheaper and live cheaper. The only way we can hope to keep up is to reduce our standard of living to theirs and match their incomes. We haven’t done that for 2 decades. Instead, we’ve borrowed more and more in order to maintain the golden standard of American living that started in the 50’s. Globalization is here. The only only other option would be to shoot all the boats and planes out of the sky and that doesn’t seem too practical.
Not even to mention the Chinese buying bonds. The only reason we’ve gone on as long as we have is because they keep buying bonds, to run up our debt, to give us more money, so we can buy more of their plastic shit. They are finally putting on the brakes.
As I walk down the streets of Asheville, I can see house after house for 300,000 to 500,000 dollars. These are houses that have been on the market for the months or even years. The owners seem stubborn. They ‘WILL NOT’ take a loss on something that was once worth so much. I just have to laugh and shake me head. My wife and I could never afford that. We will be moving into a condo one day for no more than $150,000. I think more and more people will be moving back to the city center, shedding extra cars and moving into apartment/condo buildings. It’s much cheaper and efficient.
Great bumper sticker: “My plan for economic stimulus: self accountability”
As I walked around Jones park with the dogs last week, I saw a vehicle with the above bumper sticker. That really sums it up. Society has to change. We have to save. We have to conserve. We have to be efficient. We have to compete with other counties. The problem isn’t with the government, it’s with each individual American mind set.
The National Debt will never go away.
Even if we balance our budgets, we’ll never pay off the national debt—the mess we already made. Anybody who believes that we’ll pay off the national debt by ‘picking away at it’ is silly. Perhaps, we can balance the budget, but the debt . . . forget it. Politicians come and go. The last thing they care about is getting the debt down. Spending money equals votes. I had a history teacher once who bluntly told us there was only a couple ways to seriously wipe out a national debt.
- Get involved in a huge world war where the outcome is new governments or treaties get signed to burn the paperwork of debts owed.
- Get involved in a huge world war where a bunch of citizens die and no longer need benefits, food and housing. At the same time, tons of jobs get created by the war effort.
- Have a huge worldwide plague where millions die and don’t need benefits, food and housing.
- Have a huge natural disaster where millions die, etc.
That may not be the exact words, but that’s kind of the gist of it. He’s analogy was with The Great Depression. They tried many things to get out of it, but it wasn’t until WW II, that we finally managed to get out. The combination of lives lost, woman going to work and an entire country united and cooperating made the difference.
Now I don’t wish any of the above on anyone, but I still think that’s what it’s going to take one day.
The U.S ression will soon come to an end because president Obama is using people that were once key players when the American ecomomy was growing. Obama is also open to people that think they have something to contribute, not to their familys but to the U.S and the world at larg