SOS Different Decade

I have been reluctant to write much in the last few weeks for several reasons—mostly I want to avoid sounding like a cassette tape stuck on rewind and play of the same passage. At the moment, the future of the economy is the largest issue most people are dealing with. Unfortunately, most discussions concerning the economy are abstract. That is, they focus on surveys, market prices and figures and ignore the human cost of economic realities. Frankly, the dehumanization of economic realities is the bane of free market ideologies. (See! I sound like a broken tape deck!)

The auto industry bailout is the current media darling story with the spectre of deflation rapidly coming to the forefront from behind. Why no one seems willing to comment on the fact that the present cost of buying and operating an automobile are the two main reasons sales have fallen to nearly zero would be a mystery if I were not such a cynic. We are presently experiencing a period of economic readjustment, a moment when the economic excesses of the elite few are in the process of rectification by the economic and social sacrifices of the working class many. Banks are cheerfully taking federal money without loosening credit restrictions. Auto manufacturers are taking federal money without appreciably changing the way they do business. I await breathlessly for the predictable fingerpointing by management to the “outrageous” benefits and wages of auto workers. No one will even begin to address the economic cost to our society of auto part outsourcing to foreign manufacturers.

Our wonderful governments will continue to threaten us with service cutbacks and berate us with the necessity for tax increases without ever addressing the way they do business. Employment initiatives will continue to focus on luring corporate jobs to an ailing economy rather than seeking entrepreneurial solutions of both the mini and maxi kinds.

In short, we will see business as usual in 2009 and the average worker will unequally suffer the consequences of lackluster leadership and the greed based world perspective of those leaders.