WHY I WANT THE ECONOMY TO TANK
Well, here we are in the midst of the first Republican administration in
almost a decade, and the headlines are pretty grim already. Recession has
been a buzz word for months, and the stock market is taking nose dives not seen since the
days of Black Monday (which, for those of you who have been keeping score, also happened
under a Republican administration). The Prez keeps preaching the gospel of tax cut
as economic miracle, though sometimes it seems he isn't even able to convince himself that
old-style "trickle-down" economics will be able to turn this sour economy
around.
This country is sliding from prosperity to paucity, and while everyone else seems to be
glum when they aren't freaking out, I think it's not such a bad
thing. And I say this with plenty of my own money in the stock market at stake.
Maybe it's a matter of perspective. I've always had a bottom-feeder mentality
somehow, never sharing the money-for-money's-sake philosophy that
seems so de rigeur during times of prosperity (and "prosperity" for whom?
Certainly not for most of my friends and a whole heck of a lot of the
country). When the economic boom times have left
you out, the bust times don't seem much different. Except that real estate prices
slide, which means that rents slide along with many other prices, and life becomes more
affordable. So me and a lot of my peers actually benefit when the bull turns bear
and we're not being threatened with huge rent increases and ultimately eviction on a
monthly basis.
The other aspect of economic downturn that I find appealing is that a certain humility
starts to creep into the national psyche; a certain realization that even though we have
the wealth and audacity to do most of the consuming for the world, we aren't completely
impervious to the economics of scarcity. That economics is a day-to-day reality for
most of the world, but we are able to insulate ourselves from it to an extent that we
begin to believe it no longer exists for anyone. That might be OK if we weren't
benefiting so greatly from the economic suffering of others - of
pitifully low-paid workers in Mexico and China and a hundred other trading
"partners" in the "third world". Economic downturn for us still
means that we're doing way better than most of the workers in the world, but maybe the gap
narrows a little bit. If that narrowing gap makes up a little more empathetic with
the situations of others in our "global economy" who don't have the luxuries we
do, then I'm all for it. Replacing hubris with humility makes me feel less ashamed
to admit I'm an American to the rest of the world.
The fact of the matter is, actually, that the US economy is still too strong to go too far
down, no matter how high the emotions are running at the
moment, and how many billions Bill Gates has lost on paper in the last week.
But when people are being more thrifty, life is easier and cheaper for me,
so let the rumor fly that the next Great Depression is around the corner. While
everyone else is panicking, I'll be planning my Depression dinner
party with Stone Soup and Feather Pie and playing plenty of my favorite 8-track tapes.
It's not that far from what kept me going through the Go-Go
'90s anyway, so it will be nice to see it become trendy in the Slow-Down '00s.