The Sun’ll come out, Tomorrow
I had decided to let this Blog fade away while I concentrated on my other blog, ‘ReligionIsScience’, and spend my time writing on issues implied by the title. However, as I sit each day and watch the melt down of the world economies – and believe me, it is worldwide – I feel compelled to chime in and make a few observations.
The population of the U.S. is currently about 300 million people, give or take a few million. The population of the world is about 6 billion, give or take a few 100 million. These are numbers that don’t change greatly. They do increase, generally, but in no way do they move up or down as explosively as the world economies would indicate.
Now, I realize that economies are complex creatures and simple answers only serve simple minds. However, there are a few basics that we should consider as we wonder how all the smart people got us into this mess.
Everybody on Earth shares a few basics – we all need to eat, drink, sleep, poop and pee every day. This is unavoidable – basic biology. We each have basic need that must be satisfied or we die, no ifs ands or buts. Oh, we can go a day or two without eating or pooping. We can miss a night’s sleep once in a while, but, on average, these are pretty regular activities.
Meeting these needs is the foundation of any economic system. We need somewhere to sleep, out of the wind and out of the rain, so clever people figure out how to build structures where we can go about our daily duties and, abracadabra, the housing industry is born. We need to eat so refrigerators and ovens and microwaves are invented, and there you have the appliance industry. Pooping and peeing can work in the woods but in gentle society it should stay out of sight and sound so we design bathrooms into our houses and install toilets, which require plumbing which requires a water and sewer system – bingo, now we have municipalities and utilities companies to provide those services.
Pretty soon everybody gets into the act and figures out that we can all stay occupied by providing goods and services to each other and economies are born. As we all collectively prosper from working for each other we try to send our goods and services overseas to other countries. In some cases we buy stuff from other countries. This establishes trade and our people can increase in wealth if we can sell more to people overseas than we buy from them.
Here’s the conundrum that constantly puzzles me. If we all have these same basic daily needs, and if we all find ways to serve others and profit in the process, then why do we have such mercurial swings in boom and recession? Think about it for a minute. Why did you decide not to buy that big screen plasma TV this fall? Or, that car? Was it because you didn’t have any money? Or was it because someone TOLD you things were going to get bad and you shouldn’t buy one? If you did not watch TV, read the internet or newspaper, and just went about your way living each day with your family and friends – if no one had told you you should not buy a TV would you have gone out and bought one? How about that new car (I bought a new one)? Even though Mark Haines and Erin Burnett were telling me on CNBC that things were bad way back before things got bad! But how many cars were not sold because people who wanted them were told they should not buy right now. How many Plasma screens were not sold because people were told they should not spend their money.
Then the question becomes – how many not sold Cars and not sold TVs does it take to cause watchers to say, “hey, we’re not selling as many cars and TVs! Things are getting bad!” I guess my puzzlement is whether or not recession and boom are normal cycles (yes, of course they are on smaller levels) or are they creations of manipulations and the ‘spinning’ of news and commentary that cause us to rethink or actions. For example, have you ever stated boldly to a friend that you were going to do something only to have them say, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you!’ and suddenly you rethink your planned action? Like it or not we are creatures who are highly susceptible to the power of suggestion and influence. Our basic needs and wants do not change and our daily requirements stay fixed. However, the mere suggestion of coming doom can cause us to not do something we were going to do thereby adding to the self-fulfilling nature of the forecast that caused us not to do that thing in the first place. We have the amazing ability to tell ourselves that a recession is coming and just by that act actually create the very thing we just forecast. How weird is that?
This works especially well in political years where the party out of power would like to be the party in power so they or their confederates begin convincing us how bad things are. We didn’t know things were bad before they told us they were. We thought the sun was coming up each day just as it had every day. What made this day different? Someone told us we shouldn’t do something so we didn’t and then those same people said, “See we told you people weren’t doing those things we told you not to do. Bingo, we vote for change and the other party gets in power. The crazy thing is it happens over and over. Yes, I know that there are real economic principles that drive recession and boom economies but any economist will tell you that economies really run on the collective sentiment of the populace. Control that and you can accurately predict coming economic activity.
I shouldn’t waste your time telling you the obvious without providing some solutions but the fact is, I don’t have any solution. We are the victims of Group Dynamics and Group Think. We are part of a greater whole and though we live our lives individually, as part of a society, we are subject to the collective mentality of that group.
So, how do we dig ourselves out of this current mess? Well, at some point someone is going to say, screw it! I need a new TV and I still get a paycheck so I’m going to buy myself a new TV. Ultimately, pent up demand and the realization that the world did not stop will overcome the doom and gloom and we will start living again. Slowly at first, we will poke our heads out of the bunkers to which we have all retreated, take a look and see that the sun is still shining. We will take our first few tentative steps outside and realize that the air is fresh and the warmth of the sun comforting. We will start to live again, a little wiser and a little smarter. Here’s the amazing thing! As we begin to think that life will get better it magically will! Suddenly people will go out and buy a new car. Then Mark Haines will tell us that car sales actually went up (actually he will say “Even though things are still awful, stupid people went out and started buying cars”).
This recession is not the first nor will it be the last. But it will not last forever. The sun will come out tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be sun.
