The Economy Chicken or The Economy Egg?

9/30/2008

I'm going to set aside talking about PeopleProbe tonight because I have some pressing thoughts on my mind. You might say I'm just venting. I'll bet there's a lot of people that feel like venting right now. I highly recommend getting yourself a blog, so you can vent too!

Our economy is in a mess. Gas shortages, job loss, Wall Street problems, 100 year old banks closing, going out of business sales everywhere and at the same time prices for goods and services are going through the roof. The middle class is disappearing and now you're either going to have a sack full of money, or you're going to have nothing. Tell me something I don't know, right? Our elected officials tell us that it's all caused, by the other cause. In other words, one problem is causing another, then another, all the way back to the problem that caused it all in the first place. But which problem is that? What came first, the economy chicken... or the economy egg?

It's almost like back during the Cuban Missile Crisis. At the time, I lived in northern Alabama near Redstone Arsenal where Nasa built our rockets that were to one day carry our atomic warheads into battle. My parents were certain if weapons of mass destruction were fired at the United States from Cuba, Huntsville Alabama was sure to be a target. So the officials came to our schools and trained us on what to do in case of atomic attack. They said, "If you hear the warning horn, just get under your desk, and everything will be alright!" They built the desk a lot better back then than they do now but of course, this was only our leaders trying to give us assurance in what they knew was a hopeless situation. If a WMD had hit us, there would not have been enough left to talk about anyway.

Today in our economic times, all I'm hearing is this same pending doom, hopeless situation, faith and hope strategy. Save gas, save water, save power. Cut back here, cut back there. A few months back our President gave us an answer to save money. He said that when we weren't home, turn off the air conditioner. Of course since he doesn't have the problem, he wouldn't understand that it would take the same power if not more to cool the house back to a bearable temperature when you get home.

So let's say we do cut back on everything. Everybody gets together and cuts back on "Everything". All of the consumer products that we choose or must use everyday. Now we've created the next problem. We have more jobs lost because of manufacturing and services cut backs from the lack of sales and business. Then distributors and factories start closing and the whole process gets progressively worse. With sales down everywhere, less taxes are now being paid for government programs we need so the people with these positions are out of work too and again, the situation gets even worse. So, what is the answer. Well, I have an idea. In fact, it's already been done before and for the life of me, I can't figure out why our educated leaders have not addressed this nightmare in this particular way. Have we not learned from our past mistakes and achievements?

Sometimes an answer is so simple that you can't see the forest for the trees. Now I know there will be skeptics that will say this will never work, but hear me out for a minute. The fact is, it already has. This is nothing new. The United States and many other countries have done this, and history tells us they may even have to do it again one day. In fact, it's one of the great philosophies our country was founded upon.

So let's begin with one if not probably what we see as our biggest problem and we'll see that it's not a problem, but actually our greatest asset. Unemployment. Today there are about 10 million people unemployed and the numbers are growing each day. Seems like a legitimate problem. But I don't see it as a problem, I see it as 10 million people that have plenty of time on their hands. We just need to find them something to do. In a growing economy, everybody is so busy doing their own thing, it's hard to find people to do the things we need to get done. Such is not the case here, and without question, we have plenty of things we need to get done.

Here's how it was done before, just one example. Again, when I was a kid growing up in northern Alabama, my Grand Parents told me how bad it was when they were young. Going through the depression and World War II must have been far worse than anything we as Americans have experienced at this point in our history. They also told me what President Roosevelt did to get the economy jump started and get things rolling again. In north Alabama, he simply created jobs. For one, he created the Tennessee Valley Authority. At first this was nothing but a series of dams on the Tennessee River to create electricity. So jobs were created to build the dams and and jobs were created to keep them running. Then more jobs were created as the TVA expanded into what it is today. The result... more people had money, more money was spent, more taxes were paid, businesses in the area flourished and more jobs were created to run these businesses. The demand for more products increased so industry started moving in again and even more jobs were created. A simple idea, but it worked!

I'm tired of hearing rumors that America needs to be at war to have a thriving economy. That we must put people to work building weapons to create jobs. We don't need strife and pestilence to grow, we need dreams and positive direction. In the early 1960's, President Kennedy gave us a dream, "Let's beat the Russians to the moon!" I wish you could have seen what happened to Huntsville Alabama. Nasa started hiring, business and industry moved in and commerce and production increased in every aspect. Huntsville rode this gravy train for many years. Then the flip side came. We made it to the moon, and our dream was over. Congress cut back on funding and Huntsville turned into a ghost town. Most all the support groups and industry moved out. Businesses closed and there were empty office buildings and homes everywhere. Then, the Shuttle Program came along and everything started all over again.

OK, maybe the economy does need a $700 billion dollar bandage right now, but that's certainly not going to heal the wound underneath. I think at this point we don't need leaders that say we're going to put America back to work, but leaders that tell us how and when. Every single state in America needs something; a program, a business, a structure, a bridge, an industry, a homeless shelter, something. Let's take some of these trillions of dollars and go to each state and find out what each needs, create the organizations for these needs and put our unemployed back to work doing these jobs. History tells us that the rest will take care of itself.

Let's see what will happen. First, these people will now be able to pay their mortgage and that will help the banking system. Next, they will be spending more money, paying more taxes, consuming more goods and using more services. In turn local business will increase at not only retail, but wholesale and manufacturing levels. This will of course create more jobs, goods, services, taxes and we'll all be on our way to a nice inflationary economy again, which we all know at this point, is a much easier problem to deal with! This country was founded and thrives on creativity and development, not cut backs and reduction.

One area we might start with would be to rebuild some of America's bridges before another one falls. I wonder how many of them are still structurally sound or are we just hiding under our desk again. And how about solar energy. Funding in this area for the job force would solve a lot of problems. Did you know that enough energy comes from the sun every day, to run the entire earth for a year. If solar panels were installed on your home, in the daytime your power meter would actually run backwards! At night it would turn the normal way so that over a 24 hour period your power consumption would be basically zero. So far the only thing stopping most people from equipping their homes with solar has been the cost. But, putting people to work in this industry would bring the cost down and also reduce our dependency on foreign oil.

Some would be pessimistic and say that a plan like this would take years to reach fruition. I would have to to be optimistic and say that our economy could actually turn on a dime. I saw it happen in Huntsville. Yesterday the Dow Jones Average dropped 777 points. Today the market flourished almost 500 points just at the very thought the House of Representatives "might" pass one simple bill. Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow. Fear and cutbacks are not the answer. Goal setting, growth, progress, expansion and fresh new ideas and dreams are the paths to monetary happiness for us all. Let's find the things that need to be done, allocate funds to projects that improve our way of life, create positions of employment for these projects and put America back to work.

I'm sure I'll get a lot of comments on this one, and I welcome them all.

© 2008 Jonathan Hopkins - May Be Re-Published But Not Edited