The Economic “Wizards” Behind the Curtain

Okay, I have to ask…

When do you get tired of this?

When do you get sick to death of a bunch of rich Republicans telling you how great the economy is, and showing you numbers that you know are bullshit, in order to convince you that you’re crazy?

Look at the idiots in politics and the press who are trying to convince you that the economy isn’t really all that bad. They’re all millionaires many times over, aren’t they?

To a man/woman, few have have had to go into a supermarket in many many years, to buy a week’s groceries for the family on a budget, and had to cut corners on meals, because prices have gone up, or they have $20 less,Wizardbehindcurtain
because the price to fill up their old, but paid-for car has gone up that much in the last month.

How many of them, do you think, have had to purposely pay the rent late, because the late fee on that is a hell of a lot less than the late fees on the credit cards, if they’re late?

How many of them have had to forego going to the doctor for an infected cut, because they lost a good job in the last eight years, and have been forced to take a job that pays far less and has no benefits?

How many of them have been forced to shop yard sales and swap meets in recent years, because they need a few extra dollars to pay a bill?

How many of them have been forced to suffer the humiliation of having to ask someone for assistance, whether it’s the government or a family friend, just so that you could feed your kids, or pay the electric bill?

Seriously, folks; look around. If we’re not in the position I just described, we have
been there. And if we haven’t been, we know someone who has been. And
yet, we continue to listen to these rich people tell us the economy’s in
great shape, and the NUMBERS tell us we have nothing to worry about.

folks; this economy hasn’t been in great shape for 40 years. It’s been
at least that long since the economy has grown without benefit of a
bubble of some kind. Even during the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was
president, things were looking up somewhat, but a large portion of that
was courtesy of the tech bubble.

But let’s be real; it used to
be possible for one person in the family to work, and the other to stay
home and care for the house and the kids. It used to be possible to get
a job in your local city, and keep it for the rest of your life. It
used to be possible to do all of your shopping in your little
community, and to start a small business, just selling trinkets out of
a local storefront. And pretty much everyone who worked had access to
health insurance, and really only needed catastrophic care, anyway,
because you could take the kids to the local doctor for $10 each, and
the doctor would give you a little time to pay, because he knew you. It used to be that we worked hard and were promised a pension when we put in our time, and retired.

it’s pretty much impossible for most people to own a home, without both
adults in the household working. Good jobs have become increasingly
scarce, as politicians have actually helped businesses get bigger and
bigger by shipping more and more jobs overseas. Entrepreneurship
nowadays consists of paying some huge corporation a boatload of money
to open a franchise, where you’re forced to buy their overpriced crap
to re-sell, or putting tiny little classified ads in newspapers or on
the Internet, in order to get people to spend far too much for a book
or access to a web site that tells you how to sell the same thing to
some other sucker dumb enough to fall for the same scam. You can’t just
open a store and start selling stuff to make a few extra bucks, because
the big box stores already sell it, or will start to sell it once you
open, to eliminate the competition.

Why do we allow these
puffy old rich guys to throw numbers at us, and make us think the
economy really isn’t as bad as they’ve made it? Everything they’ve done
in the last 40 years has served to undermine our economic security, yet
they keep telling us it’s all for the good. And we keep falling for it.

government keeps telling us inflation is only 3-4% a year or lower, yet
you’d be hard pressed to think of a necessity that hasn’t more than
doubled in the last ten years. (Keep watching this blog, because I plan
a post explaining why this is…)

The government keeps telling
us the unemployment is "historically low." But they don’t report on the
number of people who stopped looking for a job, or who took a job that
pays half as much, because that was all that was available.

tell us our economy is growing constantly, and yet, every community has
roughly the same businesses popping up everywhere. Where is the growth,
except in large corporate profits? And once the big box stores and
chains have grown to their maximum level, what happens then? When the
Chinese, Indian and Indonesian economies grow to a certain level, and
we’re no longer able to buy cheap crap from those places, what happens

We have gone from an economy that was at least 90%
self-sufficient up until 40 years ago, to an economy that is almost
entirely dependent on imports for everything. It’s difficult to think
of anything we manufacture to any great degree anymore. I mean, we
apparently can’t even make our own beer anymore.

Most of the
deterioration of our economy is due to the neocons running things.
Under Republican leadership, rich have gotten far richer, and whined
about their entitlement to those riches, while the poor keep getting
poorer, and the middle class has increasingly joined them. I’m not
letting the Democrats off the hook, either, because they’re almost as
bad, for even letting the neocons control the debate for so long. Few
Democrats have even mentioned the poor and middle class in recent
years, and Democrats like Bill Clinton have been far too willing to
take credit for the effects of economic bubbles. That’s not to say that
Clinton didn’t do anything right; he did more to open up markets, and
manufacturing in this country was actually starting to increase on his
watch, and "enterprise zones" actually stoked the fires of real
entrepreneurship for the first time in years. But when he left office,
Democrats refused to insist that such programs continue, and they
should have been much louder during the last eight years.

buying the bullshit, folks. Use your instincts. If the economy feels
bad, it is bad. Don’t allow people who simply put a card into a gas
pump and don’t worry about the cost to tell you that gas prices aren’t
really all that high "when you adjust for inflation." Stop letting them
tell you that prices have only increase 2-3% a year, when you know
damned well that 3% raise you got last year doesn’t even begin to cover
your increased costs. You never used to have to save for 20 years just
to afford to send your children to college, and college students never
used to leave college $50,000 in debt, before they even start working
for a living.

You’re not mental; they are. And it’s well past
time that we stopped feeding us a load of crap. Stop listening to
"experts" who haven’t had to struggle in years, if at all.

Of course the economy is great to a president who’s never had to work a day in his life.

course the economy’s great for the vice president who owns stock in a
corporation whose government contracts have provided that company with
record profits.

Of course the economy’s great for the news anchor who has a car pick him or her up for work every day.

course the economy’s great for the pundit who makes seven figures every
year to write 2-3 columns a week, have a ghost writer pen a book every
year, and appear on television for 20 minutes once or twice a week.

The question to ask is, how is the economy for the rest of us? And the answer is apparent, if you don’t fall for the hype.


The Economic “Wizards” Behind the Curtain — 1 Comment