A serious thought or two about tough times

  • I asked Greg what he thought of the Fred video I posted here, and it turned out he didn’t like it, even though he usu­ally likes All Things Fred. Greg didn’t like the switch from Fred’s usual folksy wis­dom to this arch bit of sar­casm. But more to the point, he didn’t see how a guy could attack the government’s bailout ploy with­out offer­ing any­thing in its place.

    He’s right. And I know why it’s eas­ier for con­ser­v­a­tives right now to fall into that dialec­tic trap. The fact is, even if all the big peo­ple in the coun­try felt like lis­ten­ing to con­ser­v­a­tives right now — which is dif­fi­cult even to imag­ine — no one would like what we have to say. But all the same, just for the heck of it, here’s a bit of it:

    • Things are going to get worse. One retail ana­lyst said that we’re about a third of the way through a 1000-day down­turn. I actu­ally think he’s off by quite a bit. Think Bib­li­cal mod­els: seven years of plenty in Pharoah’s Egypt, fol­lowed by seven years of famine. We didn’t have Joseph to tell us to fill the silos dur­ing the past seven years. Oh well.
    • The gov­ern­ment can’t get us out of this. Not for lack of funds, plans or good inten­tions. Just for lack of power. Hey, they can’t stop earth­quakes either. Tough old world.
    • Grow­ing the gov­ern­ment isn’t the answer. If it were, then Europe wouldn’t have been impacted by our eco­nomic woes. I don’t think there’s a good time for us to copy the Euro­pean model of mak­ing cit­i­zens depen­dent on gov­ern­ment hand­outs, but if there were such a time, this wouldn’t be it. Hav­ing the gov­ern­ment send every Amer­i­can a check for $100 or give us jobs as native bear­ers for Nancy Pelosi is a bad idea.
    • We’re all look­ing at a land­scape that is going to change. That doesn’t have to mean the end of every­thing good — it just means that the times of ridicu­lous opu­lence that most of us are used to may be com­ing to an end. I’ll go ahead and be the first weirdo to say it: I’m not sure that’s nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing, at least not per­son­ally. Some peo­ple have been doing every­thing right all along and may be fac­ing real pri­va­tion, But I will count myself among the many that have to admit that I’m just plain spoiled. It’s shame­ful that I have abused God’s great prov­i­dence and been prof­li­gate with all the plenty and rich oppor­tu­nity that Amer­i­cans are used to. But I have.

      It is too bad that it’s only when the years of plenty come to an end that I can change my ways, but bet­ter late than never, and praise God for chances at redemp­tion. The only thing that would make it worse is for me to be so unwill­ing to adapt to leaner times that I would encour­age my gov­ern­ment to rob future gen­er­a­tions in order to prop up my con­tin­ued profligacy.

    • There is a ten­dency in our cul­ture to look else­where for solu­tions. What is gov­ern­ment going to do? What are busi­nesses going to do? What are smart peo­ple who live some­where else going to do? But it’s time to make it per­sonal. Never mind other peo­ple. What are you going to do? What am I going to do? What are we going to do in our fam­ily, in our church, in our town?
    • Adapt­ing to the chang­ing times means, for me, get­ting by with less. Sav­ing more. Tak­ing a hard look at where my money is going and try­ing harder than ever to buy down credit card debt. It’s worth not­ing that all of these are trends that econ­o­mists say will make things worse. But it’s a time when I have to dis­agree with them. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and respond­ing to a bad econ­omy by spend­ing as crazily as ever is just plain wrong.

    There’s more (of course), but it’s time to start dinner.


    Related posts:

    1. Tough talk, the Fore­run­ner and Mother Teresa
    2. Good times and bad times
    3. 7 Signs End Times Begin in 2007!
    4. Signs of the end times — 10/6/06 edition
    5. Yep, we still have skyscrapers

    January 11th, 2009 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • Anam Cara 01.11.2009

    Lis­ten­ing on the radio yes­ter­day I heard a con­gress­man talk­ing about an HR bill (I missed the num­ber) that would cre­ate a “tax hol­i­day” for 2 months. He wanted a year, but couldn’t get that, so down­sized to 2 months. For 2 months, there would be no pay­roll taxes, no FICA, etc taken out of pay. This would “cost” the gov­ern­ment $324 bil­lion, less that what is now requested. It would put money imme­di­ately into the hands of the tax­pay­ers who would prob­a­bly spend it to pay down those credit card bills, buy a new car to replace the gas guz­zler, etc. Instead of $ going to Trea­sury and then being doled out to busi­nesses that might not spend/use to help the econ­omy (like the banks did), this money would be a real stim­u­lus. It would also help busi­nesses who would not have to pay “match­ing” for FICA and would have more $ to spend on keep­ing peo­ple work­ing, etc.

    Even though in the long run it might be best to let this down turn run its course, you KNOW the gov­ern­ment is going to do another “bailout.” Of all the plans I’ve seen, this makes the most sense. An ana­lyst com­panie has said that this will give the most ‘bang for the buck.” I’ve already writ­ten my con­gress­man and urged him to vote for the plan, what­ever its num­ber is!

  • Grace

    I’ve heard of that plan as well. I won­der if there’s any way it would come about with a Con­gress like the one we have now. If there’s one thing that really has me irate in all this, it’s that the peo­ple who con­trol the coun­try right now seem to be view­ing the eco­nomic cri­sis as a once-in-a-lifetime oppor­tu­nity to extend their domain. Those are the guys who are usu­ally ter­ri­fied of how peo­ple would feel if they got any break from taxes at all. But it’s worth writ­ing my con­gress­man, for sure.

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