In response to a twitter feed "ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN FEBRUARY 2009 - JUNE 2009 TOTAL KNOCKDOWN FINANCIAL CRISIS! http://bit.ly/pvRO" I had to respond. Here are the tweets, a new language already!
[I believe, so far, that Haiku is the most effective form for a limit of140 characters, so my tweets were more of a lyrical bullet point cacophony a la 'mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!' armchair analysis stirred up with a healthy dose of personal economic chaos, as a relevant model for "how NOT to panic when the shit comes down."]
*isn't there any good news or are we doomed to self-fulfilling prophecy a la fall of Roman Empire [thesis statement with historical perspective]
*okay, chicken little, I have answers for some of these doomsday-addicts. Oil prices--fixed by Saudi Arabia, not supply demand [frustration over the tone of the headline added by you tube junkie designed to disseminate despair 'like a cancer grows'--stop it already 22-year old maggot with your need to create drama panic]
*unlike food, which is a good business to get into now, if you can provide better value, grow global, eat local [sub-genre thesis statement: all you have to do is look at oil prices over the last 6 months to understand how that fee scale is calculated--arbitrarily based on the whim of OPEC and the inept masterplan of our corporate prison guards who have proven their mantra time and time again: you'll get nothing and like it! It is entirely based on what we will pay and national politics, before the election, gas was cheap, case in point.]
And food is actually something we need to survive. Oil we think we need because of how we live right now. But in terms of basic survival, food is a commodity people will be allocating more of their expendable income towards, spending more quality time with family and gathering to break bread, rather than driving everywhere talking on their iPhones. That is still gonna happen, especially here in Los Angeles, where the car companies pay off mass transit to limp along and not expand metro routes 'before their time,' when Detroit says so. That is going to change, if the Auto Show is any indicator. Soon GM will be giving away lithium batteries to power their new Caddies.
*re: housing, now more people have opportunities to buy a home, not a second playhouse vacation rental, deals in downturn areas This analysis is based on personal experience (I have not been able to buy a house in my lifetime, was the victim of a slumlord-housing-health department scam and know a thing or two about predatory lending). Something's gotta give. When the bubble was burgeoning, I noticed a plethora of second home woes, like property taxes and closing for winter. Aww, poor things having to find renters for their vacation home.
*like outside cleveland, detroit & more where if you can convert work to mobile platforms, you can buy a fixer upper and build new
Now, you can find a 'fixer-upper,' for $ 1,000 in parts of Ohio and outside Detroit where you have to put in
$ 15-20k of renovations but you have a home. The banks want to get them off their books and the poor folks who have lost their houses don't still owe on a house they can't live in. The problem: work. Depressed not desirable, by the ploy of former standards. I propose we build new communities and create our own work. If you can work from anywhere, as in your work is web/phone-based, you could conceivably live anywhere and get 5 of your best friends to join you as neighbors: insta-community! Plus, some of the houses are classic Americana, just in need of a little love.
*communities...the future is small business, micro-lending, paradigm shift in how we barter, trade, buy and co-create
This is where I get all Utopian on you now, but I know, again, from personal experience, that you a) have to do something, even if it's not the "right" thing, you have to act on what some call faith, some hope, some just fighting off inertia or embracing our Sisyphean existence, but you have to start something and adjust later. You can't wait til you have all the answers. It just doesn't work that way.
So, if we apply this as a collective consciousness initiative, at least in theory, on our good days, we might be able to turn this around. I mean, why do we have to accept the current punditry that we are, indeed, merely fucked. Why are we still listening to the 'financial' marketers who took over our psyches in the 90s when everyone was buying stocks like crack. Easy money. Abstractions. Not even on paper so it can be burned for added satisfaction.
No, we were told to buy low, sell high, as if everyone can get away with that. Look at Martha Stewart, trying to pull a fast one, she gets caught with her paws in the cookie jar.
Or buy now before the bubble bursts! Oh, wait a minute, no, now, before the housing market balloons into the stratosphere because when that happens you can sell your house and make a killing! Then, hold on, re-finance, pay less for a few months to a year, and then we'll slam that fixed income of yours so you have to foreclose! Woo-hoo!
I envision us actually getting our act together, instead of letting the worldwide diss get any worse. A Russian professor has us divied up between the former USSR, China, Mexico, Canada and eBay. Civil war, martial law. A dose of our own medicine, directed by Michael Bay. We already know what the cradle of civilization's take is on us: a necessary evil whose downward trajectory merely confirms prophetic doom for all! Yee-ha! "I don't know about you, but I'm gonna get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames!" from Jim Morrison, 40 years ago, and still true.
I propose a paradigm shift [I mean, what have we got to lose--depending on which account you go for, it's over, we're done, we're through, it's gonna get worse before it gets better, we're screwed, it's time to pay the piper, game over] where we make changes now before it's super-duper painful. We start conserving our precious resources, we keep people employed so they can 'contribute' to our economic recovery, we work with them [I saw a headline in the L.A. Times about companies choosing pay cuts over lay-offs as their solution to this mess]...better some money in your pocket, then waiting on hold for the Unemployment Office to tell you what you paid in over 15 months ago is no longer available because, in two weeks, the state of California, former 6th-largest economy in the world is going broke.
Again, how does this happen? If the state can do this while imposing tax liens so punative that the cost-of-living matrix doesn't even apply. They taxed me twice for failing to file, and I netted less than half my actual gross pay--how is that enabling me to be a productive member of society when I cannot survive despite working over 40 hours a week, on average, with no labor regulations in tact. They look the other way when it comes to the fact that labor laws are violated every second in the 'recession-proof' entertainment industry but persist in fining someone whose income clearly indicates unsustainable ebb and flow from year to year.
When I asked if there was any kind of service, a link to a non-profit for economic help to the dispossessed who merely want to stand on their own feet, where a person with overwhelming tax burdens could go and get advice and guidance to get them on track--literally, a place where I could walk in with my boxes of records and be walked through a process of reconciliation.
Because all people like me want to do is get back on our feet, retain more of our income for investment in our own businesses, stop being over-taxed in ratio to our actual income [I am freelance so sometimes I have a relatively decent annual income and then the very next year, it can literally be cut in half--due to unforeseen illness, accidents both fault and no-fault, instability in income from month-to-month, a hospital overcharge that the accounting department refuses to adjust, and instead dings the patient's credit report. When this all adds up, it means surviving paycheck to paycheck for as long as you can, fingers crossed. Our ability to support ourselves is much more of a crap shoot than in the heydey of our parents, their parents and the-feed-and-greed slash and burn years of plenty appropriated by baby boomers because, well, just because they can. If you ask me, they're the greatest untapped 'market' right now. That and financial services [comprehensive get-your-life-in-order systems you can follow like coursework but that take away the element of dread somehow, perhaps some kind of reward or soundtrack would ease the way in to the overwhelm of facing your failures], multi-convenience services [bring your groceries over and then take Spanky for a walk at lunch time while you are at the office], and businesses that support human interaction.
I believe we can re-assess how we are living and make adjustments that reflect our resourceful nature as Americans. We have an odd mix of capitalist greed, the real potential of "opportunity for everyone" and a democratic mythology to prop it all up as we move forward with a vision of the world we want, instead of resigning ourselves to the decree of the illuminati, taking too much from too many for the benefit of a few.
We can employ the principles and practices of micro-lending, established in third world countries, to minimize the negative impacts of massive lay-offs which, if ignored, will cause ripple effects throughout entire communities, local and state economies. Why don't we put more of our energy, time and resources into making ourselves leaders in research and development for the world to use as a training ground for innovation and progress?
We have the ability to solve all of our own problems--by that I mean intellectual ability. Well, at least more of them than we do now. We can solve many of our most pressing problems by applying our brain power and the economic support of those who still have the means (instead of the usual dissing of the 'have nots' for being flawed in some way--like the "get a job!" knee-jerk reaction to a homeless person or the tendency of our elders to say "I told you so" when our careers go south, instead of acknowledging their glory days of gold watches are long gone) to create real opportunities, based on where we are now v. where we wanna be.
That means allowing for some people to have more while you might take a little less, if you have more than you need. Simply Biblical. I'm not suggesting you give all your material possessions away, just that you consume less and share more, because there are a lot more people in need, even of a little kindness. A simple gesture of support can give someone the boost they need to succeed. If you have a job, take a friend who doesn't out to coffee. Throw someone some 'walking around money' without them having to ask for it. Ask your employee if they could accept a pay cut for a defined time period instead of just laying everyone off, citing reason # 2: 'the economic downturn.'
There will be huge successes. We learned something from the Great Depression, I hope, even if it's only about avoiding dustbowls. We need to repair the country, from bridges to potholes to train station depots. We need public works programs, but I propose instead of being government-sponsored [because they are already strapped, why not try a little role reversal?], these projects should be private-public initiatives, with tax breaks for employing multi-levels of skilled workers [so more people can have jobs, with the incentive of moving up based on job performance], and built-in support for re-training opportunities that help the company -- incentives for training your workers to do their jobs better.
It's the little things I am proposing. It's contributing to a belief that we can create what we want, but we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot to fix. Our infrastructure is a mess. Conservation Corps here we come, but the former-well-offs are terrified of a post-modern New Deal, claiming any attempt to ensure more equity for all is automatically socialism. Not necessarily. We have an obligation to ourselves and the legacy of our citizenry to provide for the least among us, to have a safety net once in your life for paying into the system (my generation already knows our social security won't be there when we're supposed to get it) -- but I want to do that through a new system.
I want to apply the philanthropic practices reserved for other countries, like the micro-loans in Bangladesh that grace the cover of books at the check-out counter of any Whole Foods [random musing: why do celebrity chicks insist on adopting babies from exotic locales instead of taking on problem teenagers from some inner-city nightmare right here at home -- I mean, after all, we pay $ 12 to see them and all...why can't they actually adopt a "Wednesday's child," and give them one of their extra, vacant houses?]
Other notions that might apply: open space planning where communities are designed to maximize shared open spaces (so there is more land in a semi-natural state rather than the the blight on the landscape that is tract home development) and putting services within walking distance to encourage healthier habits--you can walk to Starbuck's to get your coffee and Sunday morning paper [non-eco-friendly-I-know, but so tactile and satisfying once in a while]; more integrated support services for small businesses--from financial planning to educational upgrades; how to write business plans; and true networking potential rooted in community-building. If I know my neighbors, I am more likely to open a business that they like and therefore that will succeed. Something like that.
People in transition. Fixing what's broke, using our hands, caring for this land, stewardship that sustains a national spirit, since the whole world is predicting we will fail. They want us to be consumed by our obvious penchant for material wealth. Now it's time for that ole pendulum swing. We went far into the void of individualism and destruction of habitat. Now we must come back to meet our humanity halfway.
Now is NOT the time to revert to the obvious policy of "LAYOFF THE LOWEST PAID" (and, by nature, least-protected by 'the system') workers just because it's the path of least resistance. The amount saved might actually be greater if a portion of upper management execs took a small percentage pay cut for a prescribed period of time to keep good workers in their employ, because ultimately, those people contribute to the success of the company. That is where the greatest need for a paradigm shift in our government's role as keeper of public trust, to provide the check and balance between profit-driven machines of industry and a nation of citizens who are more than just cogs in the wheel of gross national product. The best path seems to be small enterprise, human relationships, filling a niche, offering good service and quality. Something lacking in recent years.
[I believe, so far, that Haiku is the most effective form for a limit of140 characters, so my tweets were more of a lyrical bullet point cacophony a la 'mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!' armchair analysis stirred up with a healthy dose of personal economic chaos, as a relevant model for "how NOT to panic when the shit comes down."]
*isn't there any good news or are we doomed to self-fulfilling prophecy a la fall of Roman Empire [thesis statement with historical perspective]
*okay, chicken little, I have answers for some of these doomsday-addicts. Oil prices--fixed by Saudi Arabia, not supply demand [frustration over the tone of the headline added by you tube junkie designed to disseminate despair 'like a cancer grows'--stop it already 22-year old maggot with your need to create drama panic]
*unlike food, which is a good business to get into now, if you can provide better value, grow global, eat local [sub-genre thesis statement: all you have to do is look at oil prices over the last 6 months to understand how that fee scale is calculated--arbitrarily based on the whim of OPEC and the inept masterplan of our corporate prison guards who have proven their mantra time and time again: you'll get nothing and like it! It is entirely based on what we will pay and national politics, before the election, gas was cheap, case in point.]
And food is actually something we need to survive. Oil we think we need because of how we live right now. But in terms of basic survival, food is a commodity people will be allocating more of their expendable income towards, spending more quality time with family and gathering to break bread, rather than driving everywhere talking on their iPhones. That is still gonna happen, especially here in Los Angeles, where the car companies pay off mass transit to limp along and not expand metro routes 'before their time,' when Detroit says so. That is going to change, if the Auto Show is any indicator. Soon GM will be giving away lithium batteries to power their new Caddies.
*re: housing, now more people have opportunities to buy a home, not a second playhouse vacation rental, deals in downturn areas This analysis is based on personal experience (I have not been able to buy a house in my lifetime, was the victim of a slumlord-housing-health department scam and know a thing or two about predatory lending). Something's gotta give. When the bubble was burgeoning, I noticed a plethora of second home woes, like property taxes and closing for winter. Aww, poor things having to find renters for their vacation home.
*like outside cleveland, detroit & more where if you can convert work to mobile platforms, you can buy a fixer upper and build new
Now, you can find a 'fixer-upper,' for $ 1,000 in parts of Ohio and outside Detroit where you have to put in
$ 15-20k of renovations but you have a home. The banks want to get them off their books and the poor folks who have lost their houses don't still owe on a house they can't live in. The problem: work. Depressed not desirable, by the ploy of former standards. I propose we build new communities and create our own work. If you can work from anywhere, as in your work is web/phone-based, you could conceivably live anywhere and get 5 of your best friends to join you as neighbors: insta-community! Plus, some of the houses are classic Americana, just in need of a little love.
*communities...the future is small business, micro-lending, paradigm shift in how we barter, trade, buy and co-create
This is where I get all Utopian on you now, but I know, again, from personal experience, that you a) have to do something, even if it's not the "right" thing, you have to act on what some call faith, some hope, some just fighting off inertia or embracing our Sisyphean existence, but you have to start something and adjust later. You can't wait til you have all the answers. It just doesn't work that way.
So, if we apply this as a collective consciousness initiative, at least in theory, on our good days, we might be able to turn this around. I mean, why do we have to accept the current punditry that we are, indeed, merely fucked. Why are we still listening to the 'financial' marketers who took over our psyches in the 90s when everyone was buying stocks like crack. Easy money. Abstractions. Not even on paper so it can be burned for added satisfaction.
No, we were told to buy low, sell high, as if everyone can get away with that. Look at Martha Stewart, trying to pull a fast one, she gets caught with her paws in the cookie jar.
Or buy now before the bubble bursts! Oh, wait a minute, no, now, before the housing market balloons into the stratosphere because when that happens you can sell your house and make a killing! Then, hold on, re-finance, pay less for a few months to a year, and then we'll slam that fixed income of yours so you have to foreclose! Woo-hoo!
I envision us actually getting our act together, instead of letting the worldwide diss get any worse. A Russian professor has us divied up between the former USSR, China, Mexico, Canada and eBay. Civil war, martial law. A dose of our own medicine, directed by Michael Bay. We already know what the cradle of civilization's take is on us: a necessary evil whose downward trajectory merely confirms prophetic doom for all! Yee-ha! "I don't know about you, but I'm gonna get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames!" from Jim Morrison, 40 years ago, and still true.
I propose a paradigm shift [I mean, what have we got to lose--depending on which account you go for, it's over, we're done, we're through, it's gonna get worse before it gets better, we're screwed, it's time to pay the piper, game over] where we make changes now before it's super-duper painful. We start conserving our precious resources, we keep people employed so they can 'contribute' to our economic recovery, we work with them [I saw a headline in the L.A. Times about companies choosing pay cuts over lay-offs as their solution to this mess]...better some money in your pocket, then waiting on hold for the Unemployment Office to tell you what you paid in over 15 months ago is no longer available because, in two weeks, the state of California, former 6th-largest economy in the world is going broke.
Again, how does this happen? If the state can do this while imposing tax liens so punative that the cost-of-living matrix doesn't even apply. They taxed me twice for failing to file, and I netted less than half my actual gross pay--how is that enabling me to be a productive member of society when I cannot survive despite working over 40 hours a week, on average, with no labor regulations in tact. They look the other way when it comes to the fact that labor laws are violated every second in the 'recession-proof' entertainment industry but persist in fining someone whose income clearly indicates unsustainable ebb and flow from year to year.
When I asked if there was any kind of service, a link to a non-profit for economic help to the dispossessed who merely want to stand on their own feet, where a person with overwhelming tax burdens could go and get advice and guidance to get them on track--literally, a place where I could walk in with my boxes of records and be walked through a process of reconciliation.
Because all people like me want to do is get back on our feet, retain more of our income for investment in our own businesses, stop being over-taxed in ratio to our actual income [I am freelance so sometimes I have a relatively decent annual income and then the very next year, it can literally be cut in half--due to unforeseen illness, accidents both fault and no-fault, instability in income from month-to-month, a hospital overcharge that the accounting department refuses to adjust, and instead dings the patient's credit report. When this all adds up, it means surviving paycheck to paycheck for as long as you can, fingers crossed. Our ability to support ourselves is much more of a crap shoot than in the heydey of our parents, their parents and the-feed-and-greed slash and burn years of plenty appropriated by baby boomers because, well, just because they can. If you ask me, they're the greatest untapped 'market' right now. That and financial services [comprehensive get-your-life-in-order systems you can follow like coursework but that take away the element of dread somehow, perhaps some kind of reward or soundtrack would ease the way in to the overwhelm of facing your failures], multi-convenience services [bring your groceries over and then take Spanky for a walk at lunch time while you are at the office], and businesses that support human interaction.
I believe we can re-assess how we are living and make adjustments that reflect our resourceful nature as Americans. We have an odd mix of capitalist greed, the real potential of "opportunity for everyone" and a democratic mythology to prop it all up as we move forward with a vision of the world we want, instead of resigning ourselves to the decree of the illuminati, taking too much from too many for the benefit of a few.
We can employ the principles and practices of micro-lending, established in third world countries, to minimize the negative impacts of massive lay-offs which, if ignored, will cause ripple effects throughout entire communities, local and state economies. Why don't we put more of our energy, time and resources into making ourselves leaders in research and development for the world to use as a training ground for innovation and progress?
We have the ability to solve all of our own problems--by that I mean intellectual ability. Well, at least more of them than we do now. We can solve many of our most pressing problems by applying our brain power and the economic support of those who still have the means (instead of the usual dissing of the 'have nots' for being flawed in some way--like the "get a job!" knee-jerk reaction to a homeless person or the tendency of our elders to say "I told you so" when our careers go south, instead of acknowledging their glory days of gold watches are long gone) to create real opportunities, based on where we are now v. where we wanna be.
That means allowing for some people to have more while you might take a little less, if you have more than you need. Simply Biblical. I'm not suggesting you give all your material possessions away, just that you consume less and share more, because there are a lot more people in need, even of a little kindness. A simple gesture of support can give someone the boost they need to succeed. If you have a job, take a friend who doesn't out to coffee. Throw someone some 'walking around money' without them having to ask for it. Ask your employee if they could accept a pay cut for a defined time period instead of just laying everyone off, citing reason # 2: 'the economic downturn.'
There will be huge successes. We learned something from the Great Depression, I hope, even if it's only about avoiding dustbowls. We need to repair the country, from bridges to potholes to train station depots. We need public works programs, but I propose instead of being government-sponsored [because they are already strapped, why not try a little role reversal?], these projects should be private-public initiatives, with tax breaks for employing multi-levels of skilled workers [so more people can have jobs, with the incentive of moving up based on job performance], and built-in support for re-training opportunities that help the company -- incentives for training your workers to do their jobs better.
It's the little things I am proposing. It's contributing to a belief that we can create what we want, but we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot to fix. Our infrastructure is a mess. Conservation Corps here we come, but the former-well-offs are terrified of a post-modern New Deal, claiming any attempt to ensure more equity for all is automatically socialism. Not necessarily. We have an obligation to ourselves and the legacy of our citizenry to provide for the least among us, to have a safety net once in your life for paying into the system (my generation already knows our social security won't be there when we're supposed to get it) -- but I want to do that through a new system.
I want to apply the philanthropic practices reserved for other countries, like the micro-loans in Bangladesh that grace the cover of books at the check-out counter of any Whole Foods [random musing: why do celebrity chicks insist on adopting babies from exotic locales instead of taking on problem teenagers from some inner-city nightmare right here at home -- I mean, after all, we pay $ 12 to see them and all...why can't they actually adopt a "Wednesday's child," and give them one of their extra, vacant houses?]
Other notions that might apply: open space planning where communities are designed to maximize shared open spaces (so there is more land in a semi-natural state rather than the the blight on the landscape that is tract home development) and putting services within walking distance to encourage healthier habits--you can walk to Starbuck's to get your coffee and Sunday morning paper [non-eco-friendly-I-know, but so tactile and satisfying once in a while]; more integrated support services for small businesses--from financial planning to educational upgrades; how to write business plans; and true networking potential rooted in community-building. If I know my neighbors, I am more likely to open a business that they like and therefore that will succeed. Something like that.
People in transition. Fixing what's broke, using our hands, caring for this land, stewardship that sustains a national spirit, since the whole world is predicting we will fail. They want us to be consumed by our obvious penchant for material wealth. Now it's time for that ole pendulum swing. We went far into the void of individualism and destruction of habitat. Now we must come back to meet our humanity halfway.
Now is NOT the time to revert to the obvious policy of "LAYOFF THE LOWEST PAID" (and, by nature, least-protected by 'the system') workers just because it's the path of least resistance. The amount saved might actually be greater if a portion of upper management execs took a small percentage pay cut for a prescribed period of time to keep good workers in their employ, because ultimately, those people contribute to the success of the company. That is where the greatest need for a paradigm shift in our government's role as keeper of public trust, to provide the check and balance between profit-driven machines of industry and a nation of citizens who are more than just cogs in the wheel of gross national product. The best path seems to be small enterprise, human relationships, filling a niche, offering good service and quality. Something lacking in recent years.
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