Do you read the news about the money problems in Europe any more? Do you bother to listen to the commentaries on TV about Greece and Spain and Portugal? Do you know what is happening in Ireland? Do you bother to watch the rioting and demonstrations in Greece? It’s all old news. News is defined as three days. More than three days requires constant new slants so the public doesn’t yawn and say “I heard that before.” Flick.
I mean, for most people, it’s probably “Flick.” on day one.
When I was an undergraduate at college, I got hooked on economics. I took theory of business, money and banking, labour relations, etc. I loved charts and diagrams. I liked the logic of supply and demand. That gives me an edge when it comes to reading stuff about the economy. By an edge, I mean that I actually understand some of it. A lot of it, though, doesn’t make any sense so how do most people who have no background in economics figure out what’s being talked about?
Most of the time, though, when I do watch TV, if stuff comes on about the economy, it’s “Flick.” Old movies are more fun.
I still haven’t got the Euro Zone and the EU and the EUC and who is in and who is out and where England is in all of this sorted out. Personally, until recently, I never cared. Except, of course, for what happened to Iceland. When the English declared the Icelanders terrorists, I lost it.
Awhile back, the Americans talked to decision makers around the world and convinced them that free trade was the way to go. A world economy was the goal. Go to where there is the cheapest production costs—little kids working under appalling conditions, no safety, hardly any wages—and sell the products in the countries where people had the most to spend. Great plan If you were a company with a lot of money. No business plan can beat it. Rip of the producers and the consumers.
The grease was cheap money. That’s your savings and my savings. The money we’d saved to live on when we retired. The money we’d expected to get five or six percent but the big companies wanted money at half a percent. What a break. What a business plan. Rip of the producers, consumers and the involuntary investors. Yah. The days of the Barbary Pirates was at hand again.
The problem, of course, was that cheap money is tempting. I mean, if someone says, you can borrow money at two percent or three percent or four percent why wouldn’t you borrow it and buy lots? Why wouldn’t you buy big screen TVs, cars, houses? They were giving money away and since everybody was borrowing cheap money of course everthing was going up in price. Why wouldn’t it. Those big screen TVs just flew off the shelf and those 60k SUVs roared out of the dealer’s lot. When you are using cheap money, price is no object.
The problem is that when you move all your jobs to places where there are no safety rules (they cost money), where you can pay people a dollar a day or so, where there are no pension plans, no medical plans, and those good, unionized jobs disappear and aren’t replaced, you replace producers with consumers and you take away their good incomes so they’re not good consumers anymore.
That’s when you get 40% of young Greeks unemployed. Four out of ten young people without a job. 43.1% of 15-24 years unemployed in Greece. Over all ages, 16 out of every hundred. In the United Kingdom 17.7% of 18-24 year olds unemployed. In Spain 21%. It makes the USA look good with 8.6%. Canada looks even better with an unemployment rate of 7.4%. But if you think it is going to stay there, you’ve got another think coming.
How many unemployed young people does it take to create a revolution?
In Ireland, the newest industry is bankruptcy tourism. Leave southern Ireland. Go to Northern Ireland to declare bankruptcy. The penalties are lot less severe. Who woulda thought it when we were being told about the Irish economic miracle. Amazing the mindless bullshit journalism presents as fact.
In the UK unemployment is at a 17 year high. There are a million, count them, 1,000,000 young people unemployed.
The bright lights in Brussels and the IMF want to solve the problem by raising taxes and cutting government jobs. Not their jobs, of course. Of course not. If the young people who are being told they have no future—no you cannot become a doctor, lawyer, teacher, university graduate, have a good job—use flash mobs to create a revolution and decide that what needs to be done is cutting off heads, the first likely to go are Brussels bureaucrats’ heads.
Of course, those young people without a future might question the trickle down theory. You know the theory. The rules were changed so a few people could make not millions but billions, and the theory was that some of it would trickle down when the billionaires buy expensive houses, cars, jewelry. Young people might point out that a pension of 400,000,000 dollars which some of the trickle down proponents have got would provide 8,000 people with a 50,000 dollar job for a year and that 8,000 people earning 50,000 a year might not just send a trickle down but a tsunami because they’d spend most of it on things like mortgages, food, clothes, education, their childrens’ teeth. Eight thousand people will always have a greater multiplier effect than say one person (or even two) with the same amount of money.
I hate to say it but you’ve got to listen to the economic news. It’s only boring because you don’t know that they’re talking about how you’ve been and are being ripped off. I dunno. If someone was reading a report about how a burglar broke into my house, stole my furniture, trashed the house, totaled my car, I’d want to hear it. I’d want to know how he did it so I could set things up so he couldn’t do it again. I’d also like to see him in the slammer.
And if I was listening to how that thief wrecked my kids’ futures, I’d want to listen even more carefully and I’d keep in mind that old business maxim: Don’t get mad. Get even.
Flash mobs, the Occupy Movement are a start. The technology exists to marshal the victims. There are a lot more victims than perps. But that’s just the start. The real work is changing the rules. I was annoyed this summer when someone vandalized my car. I’m really mad about people who have vandalized my present and my kids’ and grandkids’ futures.
