Current Economy

With the election looming, I’m frankly getting sick and tired of people complaining about policies and conventions.  That or people trying to sway my vote one way or another.  The problem with all this to me isn’t as cut and dry as Republican or Democrat, Left or Right, Black or white.  The Problem here lies with society itself. 

For some odd reason people have decided to start blaming everything on the government.  Now, don’t get me wrong there are some things that the government has 100% of the blame on.  Things like broken Medicare, the Welfare system, and you can go as far as to say some of the wars we are currently waging.  However, people for some reason or another view the current economy as the government’s problem.  It is not, it is a problem created years ago, that are just now finishing the snowball effect that it started decades ago.  This whole issue started with the establishment of credit.  I’ll touch more on that in a bit.  This economic problem also contributes to our current unemployment problem as well.  How can you place the blame on one man, who really has nothing to do with creating jobs for people being out of work?  Sure, maybe the guy can lobby for companies to bring jobs here, or create some project that may need a number of workers.  There is no way that one single man, unless the CEO of a company can single handedly put the entire country to work. 

Day after day I see friends posting statuses on facebook or telling me that they have been laid off, or lost their job, or people I know fresh out of college, with degrees and nowhere to work.  The reason for this is simple………The economy has changed; we as a society have not.  Take a look at the minimum wage….it is currently 7.25 in PA.  When I started working, in 2002 the wage was 5.15 per hour.  In PA the Minimum wage was 5.15 per hour from the years of 1998 until 2006.  That’s 8 years of the same exact wage, in a set of year where some of the biggest economic changes happened.  Gas is the highest it has ever been, I remember back in 2004 I was paying around 1.99 a gallon, gas is now 3.75 a gallon.  If you drive a car with a 12 gallon tank that’s a change of 21.12 a tank of gas! Not to mention all of the new additions in the form of bills, Internet, TV and especially food prices.  Even at 7.25 (for the last three years I might add) is clearly not enough.  The current Job I have pays well over that (More than double the minimum wage).  I still cannot afford to live on my own due to bills I have.  With a car, student loans, phone bill, credit card and car insurance, I’m pretty much at the bare minimum.  Expenses like gas and food are must haves, granted I suppose I could cut back on entertainment, but so can everyone else, plus I really don’t go out that much anyways.  So my question here is, if I had a wife and a kid, how the hell could I afford to support them?  I would need another job in addition to mine and my wives job.  Then, if you are both working and have no one else to watch the kids…….there is a child care expense, which I can tell you from my sister’s experience that is not cheap!

There are no jobs today where a person without a college education can go and get paid well enough to support a family.  Years ago there were tons of opportunities for people to have jobs like this.  Grocery attendants, the auto industry, manufacturing, small store/business owners, apprenticeships and other trades all provided the means to support a family.  My grandfather worked as a glass man for years, this allowed him to provide for himself and his family (Wife and two kids) and allowed my grandmother to be a stay at home mother.  So what has changed?  Why is it harder to support a family?  Because of businesses and corporations, that’s why.  Big business has been putting small business owners out of business and middle class workers out of jobs for years.  Couple that with the vulture like enterprises, like banks and credit card companies and there is your answer.  People cannot find decent jobs, so they take 8.00 an hour at Wal-mart.  They still can’t make due so they get a credit card and slowly max it out.  They rent a place from a guy who’s in the same situation, thus their rent goes up.  They make the minimum payment and are ass raped with a ridiculous, unregulated interest rate.  They need to have the internet so their children can do their homework.  This leads them down a path of perpetual debt they can never get out of, unless they work 15 jobs or die.  This is no way to live your life and there is absolutely no reason for it, what so ever. 

Places like Wal-Mart, Apple, Car Companies and especially clothing companies are slowly killing this country.  Banks and credit card companies are helping them do this.  Companies send away manufacturing jobs, leaving us no work.  Why pay a fellow country man when you can send the job to someone who will take 1.00 an hour and work 20 more hours a week?  This saves the companies millions of dollars a year, boosting their profits and filling their pockets with money.  They bring their products here and sell them at a ridiculous marked up price that most people cannot afford unless they use a credit card, making money for them and keeping the middle class in debt.  Companies are making billions of dollars while the middle class struggles to stay afloat.  If this country was less concerned with money and greed, perhaps we could have an economy that could sustain itself.  Henry Ford (Creator of the Ford Motor Company) employed a lot of Americans. He paid his workers better than any other place in Detroit.  He did this to enable them to buy a Ford and help the economy.  This essentially paid him back for the investment he made in the workers.  Maybe if we had more businessmen that cared about the American people like Henry, we wouldn’t be in this situation.  Today Big business owners are only worried how to buy themselves a yacht or line their pockets further.

Money now has a hold on all the business owners, CEOs and corporate officials out there.  No one will give that up now.  The only way we can do this is to create business for ourselves.  Perhaps the government can help here.  However, I see a major issue with this.  Perhaps we can create legislation that states something like:  If you have your corporate head quarters in America, a certain percentage of your employees must work/reside in America.  If these businesses try to circumvent this rule by moving out of the country, we would simply impose tariffs on their imported products.  If their products are more than others, many people may choose an alternative.  This will intern create lost profits for these companies.  The problem here now lies with lobbying, companies paying politicians money in order for them to vote a certain way.  This leads me to believe there is nothing that we can currently do in order to change our own economy, short of a revolution. 

So please, next time you want to preach about the economy and the upcoming election, just take a look at what really is causing the issue, before you go blaming someone who doesn’t deserve it.