Posted on 08/15/2008 6:40:42 AM PDT by Zakeet
I slapped the side of my television in April when economist Joe Stiglitz called this the worst recession "since the Great Depression." But now the economy is not only hurting homeowners; it's apparently harming parakeets, too! An AP item reports that pet owners are abandoning their furry and feathery friends to animal shelters because they can no longer afford to feed them. Never mind that GDP is puttering along in positive terrain. Headlines still scream that we're closing in on 1929, not 2009.
Are we a nation of whiners, as Phil Gramm put it a little while ago, getting himself kicked off John McCain's advisory team? No, the American public is not whining. One reason may be that consumers are swallowing $13 billion of pick-me-uppers like Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil. (A doctor friend who volunteered at a sleepaway camp said that, every morning, 20% of the kids lined up for their psychomeds.) More likely, though, Americans are just leaving the whining to pundits and trend reporters. The fellow who filed the pet story did not bother to point out that, in this alleged new Great Depression, the Pet Products Manufacturers Association says that Americans have spent 5% more this year on their pooches and pussies than last year.
Where are the Hoovervilles camped out under the Washington Monument? Where are the soup lines? Willie Nelson is still on tour, beseeching us to save the family farm. But it must be tougher for him to gin up support when the typical American farm, thanks in part to ever expanding ethanol subsidies, has see its annual income surge 50% past its 10-year average. Apparently Willie is traveling on a biodiesel, soybean-fed bus. So now we know at least what Willie's bus is smoking.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
As for hysterical journalists, I'm waiting for a reporter to tell us that pet owners can't even afford the paper to line their animals' cages. That would be a shame, because it's about all those papers are good for.
Mr. Buchholz, an economic adviser to President George H.W. Bush, is managing director of an investment fund based in San Diego and the author of "New Ideas From Dead CEOs" (HarperCollins).
kewl. I got rid of mine entirely in 1992.
Sometimes the jokes write themselves.
It is amazing how people don’t put things in perspective. Here, people think it’s a sign of doom and gloom when people get rid of their SUVS in favor of small cars. While in other parts of the world, there are people hoping that they get to eat today.
The Dems want to portray this election as the Great Depression, Bush as Calvin Coolidge, and Obama as FDR. They will try to raise our taxes to 90% marginal tax bracket.
The Dems don’t care about a depression, as long as they are in power.
I thought we had the worst economy since the depression back in 1992. That was Clinton-Gore and their media whores were saying.
So why isn’t this being labelled the WORST ECONOMY SINCE 1992? Or is this even WORSE than the economy of 1992?
By 1993 we were having notable signs of recovery.
The economy of October 2001 wasn’t so hot. The after effects of the WTC attack tanked the stock market and killed airline travel.
B&M.
Things are so bad that metrosexuals can only afford to have facials and massages monthly. They are cutting back on their double decaf, half-fat lattes, and eating lettuce instead of arugula.
Good article.
Unfair slam on the bobsled team.
Make that hoping that they get to eat this week. Seriously, we ARE a nation of whiners (and I admit whining myself on occasion).
susie
We were already heading into a recession in the waning months of the Clinton administration. The last recession began officially in March 2001, well before 9/11 and before Bush II could have possibly have had any role in it. Joe Stiglitz knows this, but he is a shill for the Democrats.
People have been using their homes as a piggy bank for the last 10 years
People have been using their charge cards like there’s no tomorrow
People have been trying to keep up with the Joneses
.....and no it’s a recession because they have to pay the piper
Sounds like BU!!$HI+
The causes and resolution of the Great Depression is another leftist mythology on a scale with other liberal fairy tales like “McCarthyism”, and the gross distortion of history that the US is an evil, imperialistic power akin to Soviet Russia.
I live outside of Ocean City, MD, a beach resort town. Most reports have 2008 being on par with last summer for tourism revenue.
As I pass by the miles long traffic jams to get into Ocean City on Saturdays, I ask the same question....”Recession?”
That’s not to say that it’s great everywhere, I know it’s not. But the MSM would have you believe it’s terrible everywhere, and it’s not.
I guess he cannot remember the one caused by Pres. Carter that lasted into Pres. Reagans first term. Now that was a REAL misery index.
It is the goal of every Marxist to create a ‘crisis in capitalism’ to usher in their new era. Individual prosperity thus fierce independence from government mandates by rugged individualists are their worst nightmare.
I'm not against "psychomeds", since in most cases they really are helpful. But we ought to recognize the connection between 1) the ever-climbing GDP, 2) the fact that said ever-climbing GDP is being achieved with a decreasing percentage of the population contributing, since an increasing percentage are on welfare, in prison, and living via illegal activity, and 3) the fact that maintaining this trend requires an increasingly unhealthy lifestyle, wherein children are pushed into formal academic achievement from preschool onwards, and both children and adults spend unhealthy amounts of time sitting still and processing information, while under heavy pressure to "produce" and "achieve" according some institution's managers' definition thereof. Human beings weren't designed to live this way, and the predictable result is depression, anxiety, and difficulty concentrating-while-sitting for hours on end.
Are we willing to give up the coddling welfare state? The ever-climbing GDP? So that children can go back to being children and parents can go back to having enough time to be good parents (and enjoy it)? And so that children and adults can go back to feeling well without pharmaceutical support?
When adults see 30%-40% of their pay confiscated in taxes or one sort of another, and half that tax revenue goes into wealth redistribution programs of one sort or another, simple math tells us that the adults are having to work 15-20% harder/longer than they really should have to. And for many this puts them past the point where they can keep this up without pharmaceutical support. They see their children growing up into a society like this, and feel pressure to get/keep their children on a track where they can keep their heads above water, and find that pharmaceutical support is necessary to keep energetic and naturally impulsive young children "on task" at their load of academic busy work, highly structured extracurricular activities that are part of the required ticket into "good" colleges.
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How many of our own kids/grandkids know bout gas stations closed til next week, or lines hour long to get limited amounts?
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