I could have seen it coming a couple few miles away. A while ago, when
all this economy bullshit started coming up, I thought to myself, "Hmm... you know what this reminds me of? The Great Depression!"
And you know what? There are quite a few assholes who study the economy
who would not have agreed with me back then, but would agree with me
now.
I will make no claim that I am an economical genius. In fact, I don't
care about economics. If I did care, I would have taken more business
classes than Beginning Keyboarding. Instead, I prefer to study history.
Look at it this way: Markets are unpredictable. History is.
Looking at recent history, here is something I do not understand:
Republicans are still pushing tax cuts as the way to cure our economic
woes. Tax cuts? Am I hearing this right? Isn't that kind of what George W. Bush was pushing?
And... um... well, I don't think it exactly worked out. Maybe the whole
point of the tax cut is to do something to make it look like you're
doing something, even if it is the stupidest fucking thing you could do.
I don't agree with the "stimulus" package. I don't agree with any form
of a bailout. That's not the way a market works. If a company fails, IT FAILS!
I don't give a damn how "important" a company is to America. If some
executives are making bad moves for a company, shouldn't they be
treated like, um, regular people? For example, if I worked at
Taco Bell, and was in charge of the drive-through window, and Customer
A ordered three tacos and a Mountain Dew, and I gave him nachos and
Sierra Mist, shouldn't my manager take me aside, and tell me, "If you
can't do your job right, you're fired". And if I keep messing up
orders, I'm out of there.
If you are the head of a company, however, the rules must change. You
can take a company, run it into the ground, and either keep your job,
or walk away AS IF THE COMPANY OWED YOU SOMETHING!
That there is not a golden parachute. Oh no... that's a golden
parachute, a golden Boeing 747 with all the nice touches, with your own
golden airport waiting for you to land, where waits your golden
Rolls-Royce to take you to your golden mansion! And all that for
running a company into the ground? Wow, either the Commies were right
in calling us capitalist pigs, or people who run companies have been
personally ordained by God himself.
Here's how you don't fix an economy: Don't give money to companies who
are not creating jobs. Don't give money to "The Big Three". They aren't
creating
jobs. Evidence: Janesville, Wisconsin. General Motors is not opening up
factories, they do not plan on opening up factories. In fact, they are closing
factories. You don't throw money to people who aren't productive, or
are not going to do anything productive with it. That's what we average Americans would call WASTING.
What you do is this: create jobs. Public works. We have two problems in America.
Problem one. Our infrastructure is aging.
Problem two. We need jobs.
Hmmm... this is rather difficult...
In algebra, there's a thing called linear combination. (I
will kill any asshole who makes fun of my math situation). Linear
combination is taking two problems and putting them together to reach a
solution.
What we could do here, with our economic situation, is combine our need
for infrastructure with our need for jobs. In theory, if you hire
people to build roads and bridges, we will have a better quality of
roads and bridges, and people working. And people working puts money
into the economy, because people work to buy things, and if people buy
things, and buy houses and cars, and go places, then people will start
selling houses, and it will be a friendlier market for houses and cars.
Stocks will rise, more people will invest in American companies,
American assets gain value, America is exporting more, getting money,
and then eventually pays off its debts to the world. Problem solved.
I'm oversimplifying, of course. Just creating jobs by building
infrastructure is not all that it's going to take to help our economy.
But it is a necessary step, and is the most immediate solution we can
start on. And then we work on market regulations. Don't let companies
do stupid shit like give loans to people who won't be able to pay them
back. Go back to the old days, when accountability meant that somebody
was responsible for something.
Responsibility. If there was some way to hold people accountable for
what they do, maybe people would act a little more intelligently. If
there was a way to make people care about the rest of the world,
quality of life would be so much better. If responsibility still meant
something in today's world where a drive-thru has replaced home-cooked
food, where pills replace psychological counseling, where incarceration
replaces therapy, if responsibility meant something, this world would
be so much better.
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