According to press reports — and even recent suggestions by President Elect Barack Obama, now less than three weeks before Christmas 2008, and precisely one month before he takes the Oath of Office — the astute, well-meaning and determined new administration is about to make a horrid blunder: wasting what enormous tax dollars it now has at its disposal on a credit-loosening-oriented “stimulus package” intended to manipulate folks into spending money they don’t have (and likely won’t quality for, anytime soon)! Rapidly rising unemployment — now approaching one in every 10 adult Americans, whose “downsized” numbers skyrocket daily — could usher in a Depression. Americans don’t need more credit. They need JOBS.
by Donald Croft Brickner
I have correctly predicted this financial mess America is experiencing — yet even I’m shocked and dismayed at how the entire “economy symptom” (of greater ills, leading to a downward spiral of all things American) is beginning to play itself out.
It’s already beyond scary out here “in the field.” It’s getting really cold, really ugly.
It’s turning into a genuine nightmare resembling a vicious game of musical chairs — and the wealthy are clearly beginning to stockpile whatever they’ve got left of (perceived) value and pushing anyone who gets in their way to the floor. That’s their version of making sure they have a chair to sit on, once the music stops.
Just like back in grade school, only without a teacher to tone down the nastiness.
Yet today, the figurative music-stopping is happening much faster than even I’d anticipated — and I’ve often painted pretty grim word pictures in recent essays.
Businesses are now closing by the bushel in this country, with very little warning. The owner-managers of such one-time profit-makers, many of whom probably attend church but obviously don’t listen very carefully, are apt to find themselves tried as criminals down the road for what they’ve casually unleashed on their former employees: dead-end destitution — and maybe even death, at the whims of their no longer being medically insured.
Trust me: when you’re feeling down and out, your survival is no longer assured.
These owner-management folks may yet have the gall to still view themselves as life’s graduates and/or life’s winners. But graduates of what? Winners of what?
Oh, now – do the chieftans really think this is all laughably improbable? …Do you really want to test those legal and moral waters, Mr. and Mrs. Greedmonger?
Your days are so-o numbered.
Hang on to your hats this Christmas, big shots: Ho, ho, ho — it’s into the tank you go.
And, yeh — I’m pissed.
Took me long enough.
* * * * *
America’s rich are the biggest bums in world history. The majority of this crowd, which got its undue eight-year-long free ride from the Bush administration by way of morally inexcusable tax cuts, are proving themselves to be the selfish, mean-spirited addicts most everyone else expected them to be, with little approaching either an accurate world view or simple ethical standards. They rival America’s worst enemies.
I am outraged. My playing it softly on behalf of their lot has gone on for too long.
It’s just not adequate to suggest these individuals “know not what they do.” They always knew what they were doing: as in, closing down their once large profits-dripping-on-the-floors businesses/industries (with little or no notice), and running off for the hills with what earnings (poor choice of words) they had left, in order to seek safe havens — i.e., musical chairs to sit on.
A lot of those “earnings,” it must be acknowledged, belonged to their employees.
Some are likely to secure their survival by doing this — but they’ll know little else but misery from this day forward. While the rest of us may die inside, these fools will die in person, out in the sunlight. They won’t need scarlet letters. We’ll know them by what’s left of their smug, just-so-better-than-everybody-else bearings.
* * * * *
What has America turned into, then? The Titanic, with not enough lifeboats to go around?
What an apt analogy: fewer lifeboats means more profits, according to our MBAs: Masters in Business Administration — the most ill-conceived college degree ever.
These people are bums. And my own generation, the “Baby Boomers,” are the ones most responsible for this loud, dire collapse we’re all now trying to override.
I’ve been deeply ashamed of my age group for a very, very long time now. Who were these people I went to high school and college with?
They were so arrogant/bloody-sure of their materialism! Not an ounce of humility. Not in hardly any of them. Any — at least in most of the ones I knew personally.
So they lived their hollow lives by-the-numbers and raised materially-well-off kids. What kinds of future do those young people now face? Did any of my peers even once try to gauge the Big Picture while they self-righteously glided along without a shred of meaningful social conscience? Was pointing fingers at other cultures the only way they could discern good from bad, right from wrong, righteousness from evil?
Those are rhetorical questions — albeit intensely livid ones.
* * * * *
Hell: my age group wasn’t even responsible for its own music. Pick a performer or group: Elvis, the Beatles, Dylan, the Stones … even my favorite group, The Association. All of those individuals were born during World War II — not after it.
About the only thing the Baby Boomers can lay claim to are effing credit cards — which, oh by the way, didn’t exist prior to 1970. We created a middleman industry that didn’t even need to do anything to earn money, except magnanimously issue “credit” ratings. What fault was it that the credit industry crashed?: a design flaw?
These middlemen were slackers, who got twistedly rich … once upon a time.
Thank goodness the credit industry now appears as if its future is terminal.
My generation did away with three centuries’ worth of handshakes with bank loan officers who, in turn, secured only the best-considered and worthwhile of loans.
Oh, but not my crowd — no. We wanted our cake to eat, yesterday.
Thus, credit cards came into being — and they were primarily used to buy crap.
* * * * *
In addition to the outrage I’m feeling toward this threatening (for the time being) present day game of musical chairs — to suggest I’m personally at deep risk by it, as well, is an understatement. Only thing is, I’m not now in such a teensy minority any longer. There are many newcomers who are absolutely sure to embrace the very same outrage I feel. Make no mistake, either — these are all survival issues.
The problem with being a “Follower,” if as a pre-birth-determined philosophical concept (see my “friendlier” essay at the online Radical Academy, where all of my work is archived — “On Followers and Leaders: Good ‘Followers,’ Like Good ‘Listeners,’ Likely Serve a Greater Purpose“ — http://radicalacademy.com/studentrefphil24dcb.htm) … the problem with being “Followers” is that such individuals, once they’ve put themselves in charge (as, in the case of Baby Boomers, of just about everything), they didn’t merely forget to gaze periodically at the Big Picture — it’s not even to be found within the contents of their figurative purses! … which by design were intended to hold a lot less.
This is a group for whom sound guidance isn’t just recommended — it’s required.
They raised kids well enough (within a highly limited context), sure — but they aren’t leaders. It was hubris on their part to believe that they could step away from their simple (but in and of itself, often demanding) metaphysical “mandate.”
Even if one doesn’t buy into the “metaphysical mandate” proposition just stated, the above criticisms stand. Pick your religion or existentialist philosophy.
Somehow or another, I believe, the brunt of my generation were born Followers. Whether that was an accident, or the intentions of the Unseen Powers That Be, I can’t say with total certainty. No matter how it’s viewed, there is a leap involved.
I can’t remember the last time I felt I was a part of my own generation. I’m just so ashamed of my age group.
We, all of us, now have no healthy psychological guidelines to steer our lives by, as a point of order. But that’s also our fault. Very few of us considered emotional health important enough to do anything about it anywhere along our timelines.
We, as a culture, had a huge opportunity to embrace broader philosophical and psychological overviews back in the middle-1980s, but our religious leaders and university researchers fiercely shouted all of that down, thanks to their unexamined psychological health and biased, ill-considered, limited world views.
It’s all just more hubris. Always it’s hubris, with its predictably destructive results.
* * * * *
And it’s here, that the raging tone of this essay is going to cool its jets. It has to.
It’s time to talk Big Picture, and Big Picture solutions. That demands cooperation, not confrontation and fight-picking.
I know better, too, than to slip into the latter. I just don’t know what to do about my anger, in this instance, particularly when my own survival seems so tenuous. So, my hunch is I’m going to leave what I said previously in place, not edit it away — while adding my genuine apology for that decision right here, and now.
(I can assure you that what does remain after editing here has been markedly toned-down. I was so angry when I first sat down to write these words, I wanted to punch a hole in my computer screen — but that, too, passed, quickly enough.)
Most Americans don’t want to go to war with each other. I really am one of them.
* * * * *
Practicality has to be a starting point when it comes to so many issues lying ahead of us.
Some points-of-view that exist today, even professions, are going to have to be discarded if we are to successfully mitigate the Downward Spiral we’re all in.
As mentioned at the beginning of this, what — okay, rant: the notion that the new administration (which, by the way, is already showing more focus, determination and wherewithal than any I’ve observed in my entire soon-to-be 62 years) is said to be seriously considering the implementation of its existing (and huge) taxpayer bailout funds on a predominantly credit-loosened “stimulus package.”
That should be deep cause (and pause) for concern, for all of us.
I believe it’s a disastrous policy idea, before it ever gets out of the starting gate.
* * * * *
Where are philosophers (the lost occupation!) when they’re really needed? Or, in this instance, one or more clear-headed, no-axes-to-grind logicians?:
A “stimulus package” strongly implies — and let’s get real, it does imply — that the money needed to effectively kick start our deeply inhibited economy is out there. It just needs only to be nudged and encouraged, so to speak, to pay it forward.
But in order to be logically correct, all of the “ifs” supporting that package must stand up — and they don’t. In logic, one should explain, if any of the “ifs” (leading to a logical “then” conclusion) fail to stand up, the entire premise then collapses.
And in this instance: the “given” that the credit industry itself necessarily must be part of the economic solution we need is suspect on its own, if not just simply incorrect.
On top of that — and this is so clear and foundational, it’s amazing that it’s now being sidestepped by new administration economic appointees, experts who should know better — the consumer, who single-handedly drives 70 percent of the U.S. economy, is in no position, practically or by inclination, to spend his or her money beyond immediate needs. With their hours cut, their salaries sliced, or their jobs removed altogether, there is no consumer to empower any “stimulus package.”
It’s all gone way beyond mere inhibition for consumers. Our insanely-out-of-touch corporate chiefs have lost their credibility all but entirely, at this stage — and in so having taken place, the consumer no longer trusts them. With that lost trust comes lost revenues. People are becoming increasingly furious and impatient with Wall Street and its corporate dip-wads (participants).
Capitalism, as this country has come to know it, is falling to its knees, broken — not because it’s been a really bad idea, but because it’s been severely abused.
Abused — by scoundrels and bullies and bums, oh, my.
* * * * *
Work the logic, and one inevitably comes to a shocking conclusion regarding our middleman credit industry:
If we are to survive economically, that entire industry necessarily has to go — not just the pushers of credit cards, but the entire middleman credit profession, in all of its guises.
All consumer credit decisions must go back to our (still-left-standing) responsible banks.
That means strictly — no asterisks involved. That’s how things were done back in the 1050s and 1960s, and it all worked out pretty well during those two decades … which, similarly, was a 20-year period in our history in which greed was so rare as to be perceived as a dark curiosity, if not an aberration.
* * * * *
Loosely speaking — and at that, the following three broad-based perceptions are apt to only hold themselves up for another month or two, at best — news reports have recently cited legitimate polls that directly or indirectly divide the entirety of working America into three “attitudes,” broken down as follows (I wish I could remember this one study specifically — but we all have our weaknesses, and I’m not an erudition guy, either by gifts or by inclination; still, this is pretty accurate):
Question: How have the nation’s economic difficulties affected your spending?:
25 percent: Hardly at all… BTW — what economic difficulties? (Rush Limbaugh!).
50 percent: It’s caused us to make a few major cutbacks we’re not used to, alas.
25 percent: We’re dying out here!, you insulated, insensate (bleep)!!
The public’s perceptions about the economic health of America amazingly still continue to swing back and forth through the entire spectrum. But public opinion, never a highly stable barometer and riddled with denial today, has been changing lately with each new jobs cuts and bankruptcy reports. Logically, then, that would suggest that its opinions, in this specific instance, are all best left on the sidelines.
The Obama administration, incredibly already deeply at work prior to its having even been sworn in officially(!), appears to “see” things pretty clearly at this stage — and its uniform passion to “make things right” seems genuine, and committed.
This man we’ve elected really does appear to be the real deal, by the way — which is great cause for optimism for the majority of us, over the long haul.
So far that seems to be a good bet, anyway.
But this decision this administration pushes through today (or, at least, once it takes office[s]) requires a Big Picture overview that, even in our universities, is not part of any design or policy mechanics, almost anywhere. We, as a culture, just don’t “do” Big Picture. The overwhelming majority of us don’t think that way.
We have no healthy psychology. Our spirituality is scattergun. And we don’t even know what we’re “supposed” to be doing as human beings, here on planet Earth!
We are a knee-buckled mess.
“Getting it right” will continue to be a huge challenge for our new administration and our heavily Democrats-driven Congress.
Where they’re both most likely to make mistakes, at this point in our history, is by failing to be daring enough.
Just one seriously mistaken major decision made whose roots are mired in the recent past could be enough to transform our three-stage downward spiral into an end days-like cataclysm. We don’t just need smart people in office now; we need brave ones.
Yes, I’ve argued that these current economic difficulties are but one symptom of many that will manifest over the next couple of years, as all that we’ve known at the very least now begins to show deadly cracks in our once impenetrable and safe megabunkers. I stand by that, and will continue to — but much of all this can still be managed, if — if — we stand side-by-side and work together, with humility.
* * * * *
I’ll close this essay with a brief open letter to our new president:
Mr. Obama, please: don’t waste our (relative) limited federal finances on anything that’s headed into oblivion no matter how highly it’s regarded. Some old practices really do need to be discarded. Nothing we might opt to do is likely to save them.
The starting place, logically, would be to look at All of This, downward from above. See the Big Picture — and understand that your talented people may not be so capable (or inclined) to do that as well as you. Encourage them to try their best.
This is all a Big Picture problem — every excruciating bit of it, and please don’t ever lose sight of that. Some of these “symptoms” may prove so insistent, we’ll likely narrow our view, and end up foolishly shooting BBs at a rhinoceros that wasn’t itself the actual bottom-line threat.
One terrific idea you’ve suggested recently is a nationwide public works project that not only is desperately needed, but also would put countless people back to work. That’s a terrific idea, because what’s needed are jobs, not credit points.
The credit industry simply has to go. Foo on middleman credit, as a concept.
The credit industry will not survive current conditions, which themselves cannot be tempered to any meaningful degree — not during this economic crisis muddle.
The credit industry is not a meaningfully necessary or functional cog from any corrective Big Picture perspective, anyway.
As an aside — what for-the-greater-good are almost any middleman profits-driven enterprises, as far as that goes?
In any event: what Americans need almost immediately are new jobs – period.
Jobs.
Jobs.
And countless more jobs.
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