Toldja So

So I've seen some reader comments in the WaPo (as we call the Washington Post around here) saying that your average Joe could have told you years ago that the whole economic system was too messed up to hold together. Your daddy may have been a blue-collar working stiff, but he worked at the same job his whole adult life, and retired with a solid pension and enough savings to give his kids a small inheritance. Nowadays, both Joe and his wife Jane work full time just to keep up with the payments on the credit card bills. If there's something left over, they put it into their 401(k) or their kids' college fund and hope the market doesn't take a nose dive when the time comes for them to draw on those funds. Joe and Jane could lose their jobs for any reason or no reason at all, and a hospital visit or a hike in their mortgage payments could send their household finances into a tailspin. If the whole global economy depends on overstretched American consumers like Joe and Jane and everyone they know, why are you surprised that the whole thing is falling apart now?

On the other hand, an editorial writer for another publication (whose name escapes me now) thinks this kind of thinking is just Democrat gloating over the mess those darned Republicans have made. He calls it the flip side of the Republican gloating during the heyday of Newt Gingrich, and those eight years of you-know-who that just ended last month.

This doesn't feel like gloating, though. In order to gloat, you have to be standing outside the mess looking in. Unfortunately, there's no ground to stand on right now that is outside this global mess. If you're going to indulge in schadenfreude, there has to be some freude. Otherwise, it's just schade, and we're all pretty much knee-deep in schade right now and sinking fast. No, this feels more like Jeremiah warning of dire things and getting thrown down a well for his efforts. Jeremiah was just as broken-hearted as everyone else when he turned out to be right.

We still have a few die-hards on both sides of the aisle in Congress and on the talk radio shows (and apparently one guy who is keeping my sister's print shop afloat by spending scads of money printing up anti-Obama stickers). They throw parties when they are up and throw tantrums when they are down. Most of the rest of us are rolling up our sleeves and picking up our mops and buckets. We were right, we saw this coming, you didn't listen, but we're all in this mess together, so we might as well start cleaning things up. Maybe you'll listen next time, but we rather doubt it.

Are we Safe Yet?

Over the last several years, we have put up with an awful lot in the name of keeping us safe. Especially in the DC metro area, we have concrete barriers and security checkpoints enough to outfit a military base. So are we safer?

Let's see. There haven't been any more airplanes crashing into high-rise office buildings, true. But there was that one lulu of a flood in New Orleans, and that collapsed bridge in Minneapolis, and let's not forget all the good folks who won't be coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda hasn't been able to demolish our way of life, true. But greedy bankers, corporate executives, and crooked politicians have that base covered pretty well. It's getting harder and harder to stay in the shrinking middle class these days, what with all the cutbacks and layoffs and life savings evaporating into the ether. And the next few generations will get to share in the fun as they try to keep up with the interest payments on all that debt.

Bottom line: whether you get blown up by a terrorist, or go to an early grave because you can't pay for good health care, or crash to a watery death because the bridge rusts out from underneath your car, you're just as dead one way as another.

I'm just sayin'...

Magical Thinking and the Vanishing Middle Class

This current economic upheaval got me to thinking about how hard it's gotten to live a middle class life lately. As is often the case, one thought ties in with another, and this particular thought latched itself onto a ballot issue that Maryland residents will be voting on next Tuesday -- do we want the state to install thousands of slot machines to raise revenue for our schools, save the horse racing industry, and keep those gambling dollars in-state?

I'll explain. When I was growing up in the sixties, it was relatively easy to get a good solid job without an advanced degree, and to hold that job until you were ready to retire -- with a proper pension, of course. You didn't have to aspire to a six-figure salary or put in a 60-hour workweek just to keep the wolf away from the door. If you were the ambitious type, you could start out working in the company mailroom, work your way up the company ladder, and go as high as your talents and temperament would allow.

That doesn't seem to be the case any more. Many of the people I know are one pink slip or one medical crisis away from the edge. Many of my friends owe a year's salary or more for credit card bills, medical bills, car payments, you name it. And not all of them are out-of-control spenders. Employees are considered disposable commodities, and if the stock market tanks just when you were planning to retire, you can watch your 401(k) vanish before your very eyes.

Here's where the slot machines come in. My theory is that when people feel helpless and out of control, they turn to magical thinking. Maryland is in need of some serious tax money right now, and they are hoping to get it from folks who are hoping against all evidence that they are going to hit that one big win that is going to put them on easy street. Or at least pay off a few bills. When all your other options are in the dumpster, gambling starts to look pretty good.

You see a lot of magical thinking going on with all the "reality shows" on television. Contestants perform in talent contests, eat worms, bicycle across New Guinea, whatever, trying to win that million-dollar prize. Some of them are quite good, but others make you wonder what the heck they were thinking when they signed up. They all want that big chance at fame, that wad of money, whatever that one big thing is that will get them out of their humdrum everyday lives.

Magical thinking takes over when there's no clear path to lead you upward. That path has been slowly but surely erased over the last 30 years. Remember "rightsizing" and "flattening the organization" from the 1980s? The organizations didn't really flatten so much as they raised the top levels, lowered the bottom levels, and shaved the supporting pillars between the two levels until they were pencil-thin. With no middle levels, you either had to be born at the top, get incredibly lucky, or work like a maniac to make that one big leap. Don't even think about settling down in a nice mid-level job -- those jobs are a vanishing breed. Come to think of it, don't even think about settling, period. Because that pink slip may come at any time. When your whole future is looking like a crapshoot, buying those lottery tickets and playing those slot machines starts to look less and less irrational.

My hope is that once these financial castles in the air have finally crashed down to earth, we can all get busy and start building solid foundations again. Real people making real stuff and earning real incomes so that they can pay real money for the things they really need. Is this idea any more hopelessly naive than the idea of building an entire society on debts, derivatives, and slot machines?