To the Stupid, its the Economy
I am amazed at the way people will say, without flinching, that to keep the economy growing, people should be encouraged to spend as much as possible. Excuse me? Blowing any discretionary income I may have - nay - blowing even the money I earmarked for savings in a fever of durable-goods consumption - that is what keeps the economy growing? That is the most patriotic thing for me to do? Remember that, what they were saying after 9-11? "If you love your country and want to offer condolences to the victims - direct your donations instead to your local restaurants, car dealerships, and real estate offices. Splurge a little, drown your worries in credit cards, cause if everyone overextends themselves just a little, all at the same time, then we'll all be okay. Ready, go."
Good god. It is quite a depressing thing to think that the nice job I have here at the college depends - somewhere down the economic food chain - on people blowing their savings to buy more crap, so more can get made, so the company that makes the crap can afford to pay enough in salary to the parent who sends his kids to this college. It really is just like the six degrees of separation. Except that its closer to 6000 degrees.
I am convinced that the economy is a social force we have little collective control over. Government only has the power to thwart an economy's natural tendency (to either grow or shrink) and an economy's booms and busts are like an erratic pendulum that lost its fluidity and stability when the clock was shaken from outside. Governments are big enough to affect it, but - since they are by definition collections of foolish or narrowly informed individuals - never wise enough to touch the pendulum without whacking it out of place. But to listen to economists, with their numbers and jargon and faux-erudite sentence structures - you'd really think that one has to be stupid to not understand the economy. But these idiots are fronting, and they are like Confucius' most foolish men - they don't know what they don't know.
