Okay, so I did a blog recently about the economy because I am in Macroeconomics this semester and I said my blogs would be about what it is like to be my age and going to college, amongst other things. The ECO class is fascinating, although my mind really isn’t naturally wired in that direction and I have to spend double the study time to pick up the same amount of information as those for whom it does come naturally. And, speaking of that class, don’t get too stressed about the lingering unemployment numbers. Turns out that unemployment levels peak somewhere near the end of a recession and remain at or near that high level for at least a couple of years afterward. No amount of Gerry-rigging on the part of the government or promise-laden politicians seeking office is going to bring those numbers down much faster. Sorry to steal your thunder , Glen and all your fanatics out there blaming Obama because he hasn’t ‘fixed’ unemployment. The sad reality is that in November people are going to vote against the very ones who helped this recession not be as dire as it was heading out to be, just because they don’t know enough about how their own economy works to realize what a bullet we actually dodged.
But I digress. I meant this blog to give equal time to my other two classes, Developmental Psych and Student Development (which is a miserable little pie class the college forces on you so they can add a few $$ to their coffers. I don’t blame them – money’s tight, but if I’ve been a student for more than a decade and an adult for thirty-plus years, what do they really think they’re going to teach me?!) I’ve decided to explore the exciting psych topic of Nature versus Nurture.
How does that affect our free choice, I wonder? For instance, I chose to have a chicken salad sandwich today for lunch. My mother never gave us chicken salad growing up. I never even knew the stuff existed until I met my future mother-in-law and we had chicken salad sandwiches one day at her house. Can we say that because I somehow have a genetic propensity to love all things fat-laden, my choice was because of the mayo? Or was it because it was on sale at Food Lion? If so, can THAT be traced back to genetic survival instincts to conserve resources, or to my grandfather who once argued with a girl at the five-and-dime because she was charging us five whole dollars for a dress for me to wear to church? Burning questions.
How about my choice yesterday to be overtly annoyed and not too very nice to a co-worker in response to what I interpreted as his audacity in asking me why another co-worker had more “goodies” than he did? Was that because of his socially aggressive manner in questioning me about something that was, in my opinion, none of his business to begin with? Or did it have everything to do with the fact that my menopausal state was aggravated by my forgetfulness in taking my supplements for the last three weeks? Hmm… I tend to think that if I had called him the names I had running through my head and threw the phone back on the receiver with a cuss-word, one might lean more toward the genetics. (Temper runs in our family, especially when hormones are involved.) I have been, shall we say, a little ‘antsy’ the last couple of weeks. Nonetheless, perhaps he is still alive because my reaction was purely environmentally-motivated.
And speaking of miracle drugs, let me just say right here that if I hadn’t been turned on to B12 supplements in the last year, I would likely be on something much stronger and more psychotropic. Thanks, Mom. Turns out that little B12 vitamin every day keeps the raging Maxine inside from taking off her bunny slippers, grabbing her cane and hobbling out to take someone’s head off. Now, I’m just getting into the meat-and-potatoes of this whole menopause thing; so I’m not certain just how long the little pill will hold her at bay. But it seemed to work well for my mother and, again, we visit that whole genetics question and whether it won’t do the same for me.
So here’s another one for you. Why do we pick the mates we do? Why do we pick mates at all? When we’re my age and there are 7.7 million more women in the U.S. than there are men, how much of not picking a mate is because there aren’t any to pick and how much is perhaps a genetic self-preservation compulsion? I don’t know. I’m just asking. I see patterns repeated in my family over and over and cannot help but ask why. Why don’t we all communicate better? Why do we all engage in the silent treatment when we’re offended or hurt? And once the main players become silent, there is no armistice – the stage remains silent and empty because no one’s going to open that door again. And when we do talk to each other, lord, we spill our guts about everything!! Why do we all wait so late in life to figure out all the important things we’d have been so much better off learning at a younger age? If genetics can make a newborn responsive to rhythm, a mother’s touch, and bright pictures, then why can’t they lead us into better life choices? Is it because the environmental factors beat the hell out of us for so long that we forget to listen to our genetic codes after a while? I don’t know this either. I’m just asking.
Why would I have ever thought it was a good idea to get a curly perm, even if Barbra Streisand had one? Why would an unnamed member of my family think it was a really cool idea to get her nipples pierced? Or why did another unnamed member decide to play with fireworks when he knows he’s clumsy and accident-prone? (Blood loss, ER visit, angry wife…long story.) Why did I find love with a guy who rides a Harley, has long, long hair, piercings and tattoos across half of his body? Why did I think it was a good idea to go back to school at a time when genetics are really beginning to have their way with me and my brain is not always firing on all cylinders? And a see-through negligee! REALLY?! What thought process, if any, was involved there??? I guess I’m just going to have to keep going to class to find the answers. If I get any, I’ll let you know.
Meanwhile, I encourage you to ask your own why questions. You can even send them to me, if you want. I won’t know the answers either, but at least we can wonder together.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Why We Really Aren’t Doing That Badly
All you have to do these days is watch the news programs to wonder if the only real option left to us is a goodbye note and some razor blades. Depending upon your political bent, you can watch one news channel that will tell you that Obama and his sneaky cronies are stealing away your freedom, and running the country to utter financial ruin. Or you can watch another channel that tells you the partisanship of the Tea Partiers and the ultra-conservative Right are killing any hope for a beleaguered country reeling from years of free-wheeling big business running Washington. The family is threatened, our religious freedom is threatened, taxes are taking over, lobbyists own the halls of our government…
I call myself a liberal-leaning moderate, so I tend to fall for the left rhetoric sooner than the right rhetoric. But I try – I do try very hard – to look at all sides and examine the reality which is located somewhere in the middle where nobody’s looking right now. And what I see is really not as bad as either side is painting it.
Consider this. Even in our current economic times, the U.S. is the leading producer of goods in the world, bar none. Even China, with a GDP that has grown in leaps and bounds in the last decade cannot hope to achieve the levels of production our country has reached. In 2007, the U.S. was producing fully twenty percent of the world’s goods with only five percent of the world’s population. China, its next closest producer, produced only five percent of the world’s goods with twenty percent of the world’s population.
Yes, we’ve experienced a downturn, but economic indicators reveal that we are still the most powerful player in the world market. Without our production and consumer goods, and without our investment dollars in other countries, the world’s economic picture would be very much bleaker. Even in our current economic state we are shoring up the economies other nations throughout the world. We not only produce consumer goods, but we provide production goods for other countries so that they can produce their own consumer goods and in turn supply more of our needs. We invest in other countries’ economies by purchasing their production goods and using their cheaper labor for jobs no longer viable on U.S. soil.
Even with our unemployment stats in double-digits, as they are currently, we still employ the largest work force in the world. A workforce that is the most industrialized and educated, despite what we realize is a less than optimal educational system. And even our poorest citizens enjoy common goods and services that the poor in other countries can only dream about. Even our homeless can receive a decent meal and a bed in just about any community. Even our garbage is of higher quality.
This is not meant to be a ‘bragfest’ on the U.S. Certainly we have many failures and cracks in our systems that need our immediate attention. We have become complacent in our giant status and sometimes we look the other way when it comes to addressing human rights and equity. We desperately need tax reform. On either side of the political aisle we can point fingers and show statistics that look quite appalling as they are presented.
But I posit to you that despite all of that, the worst problem we Americans have right now is our lack of hope and belief in ourselves. We look at where we are now and, depending upon our political leanings, begin to say there’s too much government and Obama’s trying to make us a socialist nation, or conversely, there’s not enough government and the selfish corporate power-mongers are running over the little man and trying to make us a dictatorship run by Wall Street. See? Either way, you’re right….and you’re wrong.
Historically, this recession is no worse than the one we suffered after the Great Depression. Because of governmental safeguards in place now that weren’t back then, the same economic conditions that practically brought us to ruin in the 30’s can exist without causing the same level of damage. And if you look at our pattern of rising and falling economies, this is just a ‘correction’, a dip in the ebb and flow of our ‘business as usual’ economy. Why does it seem so bad this time? Because it is one of the bigger dips – inevitable but not world-ending. Also, because our economy is now so closely tied to the world market, a dip here causes market dips everywhere else, in markets not quite as able to withstand as we are. That makes it seem even more ominous.
Will we survive it? Yes. Is it because, as some might say, we have become an evil, godless nation of self-seekers who need to be brought down a notch or two? Is it because we have allowed our government to take over our economy and kill our free market? Is it because our free market was too free? Or because Communists, or whoever the evil-power-du-jour may be, are taking over our government from within? No. We are in a market fall right now because that’s what our economy does. It may not do it to this extent every time, and there are people on Wall Street, in the banking and real estate industry who carry at least some of the responsibility for how bad it has gotten this time.
But if we continue to listen to the pundits breathing doom and gloom, we cost ourselves precious recovery time. If industry continues to take what should be considered unethical advantage of the current economy to get cheap loans and sit on the money, keeping their own empires intact while the common worker without such a soft pillow to land on hits the ground hard, we will not recover as quickly or efficiently. Government will of necessity have to continue stepping in to force the pocketbooks open and free up the clog in the market machine, and/or pass regulation to prevent a repeat performance. People who are anti-government will react with venom and suspicion, attacking without really knowing who to attack. Those who believe governmental regulation is the only answer will push for reforms that have potential to further stagnate the market.
What we all – and I do mean all – really need to do is go on with our business and tone down the rhetoric. We need to do our own research instead of letting the entertainment industry tell us how to think. We need to check out history and realize that we are currently in the middle of an ebb in the usual ebb and flow of our economy and stop rushing for the panic button. We need to look across the aisle at our neighbor, no matter his convictions, and realize that without our fellow Americans we are not a nation. We really can kill our economy when we become so self-interested, so hate-driven for anyone different than ourselves, that we fail to see how we all prop each other up. We need to open our pocketbooks and put the word ‘trust’ back on those dollar bills.
We are like a giant machine with millions of tiny gears and cogs. Government, industry, labor….if any one of us tries to get too big, too important, too self-interested, we damage the balance of that machine. Enough of that and we really could reach a crisis. And a crisis in the biggest, most productive leading nation in the world is not just a crisis for us, but for everyone everywhere who relies on this giant machine, whether they know or acknowledge it or not.
So that’s my ‘why can’t we all just get along’ speech. I hope that I presented it with enough supporting facts to make it convincing. But if not, and you’re interested, feel free to write to me and ask – I’ll be happy to present the statistics in more detail and reference my sources. In conclusion, if I could offer everyone just one piece of advice right now, I’d say turn off your TV sets. Go outside and reach across the fence and meet your neighbor. Realize that the person you are looking at, whoever he or she is, holds just as important a place in the machinery as you do. Then maybe we can all start working together toward the common good and eliminate the words ‘special interest’, 'divisive', and most importantly, 'fear' from our vocabularies.
I call myself a liberal-leaning moderate, so I tend to fall for the left rhetoric sooner than the right rhetoric. But I try – I do try very hard – to look at all sides and examine the reality which is located somewhere in the middle where nobody’s looking right now. And what I see is really not as bad as either side is painting it.
Consider this. Even in our current economic times, the U.S. is the leading producer of goods in the world, bar none. Even China, with a GDP that has grown in leaps and bounds in the last decade cannot hope to achieve the levels of production our country has reached. In 2007, the U.S. was producing fully twenty percent of the world’s goods with only five percent of the world’s population. China, its next closest producer, produced only five percent of the world’s goods with twenty percent of the world’s population.
Yes, we’ve experienced a downturn, but economic indicators reveal that we are still the most powerful player in the world market. Without our production and consumer goods, and without our investment dollars in other countries, the world’s economic picture would be very much bleaker. Even in our current economic state we are shoring up the economies other nations throughout the world. We not only produce consumer goods, but we provide production goods for other countries so that they can produce their own consumer goods and in turn supply more of our needs. We invest in other countries’ economies by purchasing their production goods and using their cheaper labor for jobs no longer viable on U.S. soil.
Even with our unemployment stats in double-digits, as they are currently, we still employ the largest work force in the world. A workforce that is the most industrialized and educated, despite what we realize is a less than optimal educational system. And even our poorest citizens enjoy common goods and services that the poor in other countries can only dream about. Even our homeless can receive a decent meal and a bed in just about any community. Even our garbage is of higher quality.
This is not meant to be a ‘bragfest’ on the U.S. Certainly we have many failures and cracks in our systems that need our immediate attention. We have become complacent in our giant status and sometimes we look the other way when it comes to addressing human rights and equity. We desperately need tax reform. On either side of the political aisle we can point fingers and show statistics that look quite appalling as they are presented.
But I posit to you that despite all of that, the worst problem we Americans have right now is our lack of hope and belief in ourselves. We look at where we are now and, depending upon our political leanings, begin to say there’s too much government and Obama’s trying to make us a socialist nation, or conversely, there’s not enough government and the selfish corporate power-mongers are running over the little man and trying to make us a dictatorship run by Wall Street. See? Either way, you’re right….and you’re wrong.
Historically, this recession is no worse than the one we suffered after the Great Depression. Because of governmental safeguards in place now that weren’t back then, the same economic conditions that practically brought us to ruin in the 30’s can exist without causing the same level of damage. And if you look at our pattern of rising and falling economies, this is just a ‘correction’, a dip in the ebb and flow of our ‘business as usual’ economy. Why does it seem so bad this time? Because it is one of the bigger dips – inevitable but not world-ending. Also, because our economy is now so closely tied to the world market, a dip here causes market dips everywhere else, in markets not quite as able to withstand as we are. That makes it seem even more ominous.
Will we survive it? Yes. Is it because, as some might say, we have become an evil, godless nation of self-seekers who need to be brought down a notch or two? Is it because we have allowed our government to take over our economy and kill our free market? Is it because our free market was too free? Or because Communists, or whoever the evil-power-du-jour may be, are taking over our government from within? No. We are in a market fall right now because that’s what our economy does. It may not do it to this extent every time, and there are people on Wall Street, in the banking and real estate industry who carry at least some of the responsibility for how bad it has gotten this time.
But if we continue to listen to the pundits breathing doom and gloom, we cost ourselves precious recovery time. If industry continues to take what should be considered unethical advantage of the current economy to get cheap loans and sit on the money, keeping their own empires intact while the common worker without such a soft pillow to land on hits the ground hard, we will not recover as quickly or efficiently. Government will of necessity have to continue stepping in to force the pocketbooks open and free up the clog in the market machine, and/or pass regulation to prevent a repeat performance. People who are anti-government will react with venom and suspicion, attacking without really knowing who to attack. Those who believe governmental regulation is the only answer will push for reforms that have potential to further stagnate the market.
What we all – and I do mean all – really need to do is go on with our business and tone down the rhetoric. We need to do our own research instead of letting the entertainment industry tell us how to think. We need to check out history and realize that we are currently in the middle of an ebb in the usual ebb and flow of our economy and stop rushing for the panic button. We need to look across the aisle at our neighbor, no matter his convictions, and realize that without our fellow Americans we are not a nation. We really can kill our economy when we become so self-interested, so hate-driven for anyone different than ourselves, that we fail to see how we all prop each other up. We need to open our pocketbooks and put the word ‘trust’ back on those dollar bills.
We are like a giant machine with millions of tiny gears and cogs. Government, industry, labor….if any one of us tries to get too big, too important, too self-interested, we damage the balance of that machine. Enough of that and we really could reach a crisis. And a crisis in the biggest, most productive leading nation in the world is not just a crisis for us, but for everyone everywhere who relies on this giant machine, whether they know or acknowledge it or not.
So that’s my ‘why can’t we all just get along’ speech. I hope that I presented it with enough supporting facts to make it convincing. But if not, and you’re interested, feel free to write to me and ask – I’ll be happy to present the statistics in more detail and reference my sources. In conclusion, if I could offer everyone just one piece of advice right now, I’d say turn off your TV sets. Go outside and reach across the fence and meet your neighbor. Realize that the person you are looking at, whoever he or she is, holds just as important a place in the machinery as you do. Then maybe we can all start working together toward the common good and eliminate the words ‘special interest’, 'divisive', and most importantly, 'fear' from our vocabularies.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)