Serious Thoughts About Money I Don't Have

In college I took one semester of Economics and got a C+ which obviously qualifies me to comment on the impending recession / market fluctuation / mortgage crisis / bump in the road / natural ebb and flow / apocalypse.

How did we get here? Let’s take a look:

(1) It’s pretty safe to say that the Industrial Revolution is old news, right? Anybody know anybody that works in a factory? No? We are now a service economy and an economy of thought leadership (product design, marketing, tech design, creative, etc.). We have been for a while now. So why do we support trade agreements and honor tax codes that were designed to benefit the old steel mills and workshops that moved overseas fifty years ago?

(2) When I was three my mom taught me this simple math. If I give you five apples, and you give me one apple, you’re getting four more apples than me. The export/import ratio from China to the US is 5:1. How do you like them apples?

(3) The budget deficit = more second grade math. If you have a hundred dollars, and you spend three hundred dollars, and you keep doing this, over and over again, and then you try to fix it by spending four hundred dollars, then five hundred dollars, YOU’RE AN IDIOT.

(4) The solution. Both Republicans and Democrats want to give us a tax rebate (increases the debt) and encourage us to spend it (on things that were likely made overseas). This is like trying to stop gun violence by giving people free knives.

Here’s a hypothetical. What if the Fed didn’t spaz out and cut rates ever time the Dow drops a hundred points? What if we stopped overspending, and put America on a budget? What if we reevaluated our trade relationships and protected American jobs? It seems to me that there are a lot of smart people, a lot of people who did better than a C+ in Econ 101, who want a gourmet meal in microwave time. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and there’s no quick fix.



*That being said, I’ll probably spend my $600 on a Nintendo Wii or something. Being a hypocrite sucks way less when you’re swashbuckling pirates in interactive 3D.