My Response to a Comment on MSN Today...

This letter is a response to a comments from a fellow by the name, Belowbook, to an article titled "9 Reasons the Economy Won't Recover. I won't paste the entire content, just one tired talking point that basically represents the spirit of his statement.

Below books - "There is absolutely nothing that the government can do to stop the recession."

I vehemently disagree. The government can do something to rectify the recession, and everyone who understands the ebb and flow of money knows what needs to be done. Adjust the taxes, and collect those taxes from the citizenry who have for at least twenty years been underpaying their share. No part of the Lord's prayer states "and forgive us our taxes, as we forgive those who levy taxes against us." Find the money, pry it out of tax shelters, and overseas banks, then figure out a way to reinvest the money in a sensible manner.

The very simplest explanation for one major element in the current ebb of money is linked to the boomer generation, specifically those boomers who constitute the driving force behind the economy of the late eighties and nineties. Perhaps they once identified themselves as Yuppies, but that was many years ago. This segment of boomers were incredible revenue generators, and their numbers were many. Yes, we now understand that such profits were created at a heavy price to the American economy, and to the environment, but they certainly made money, lots of it. Now, the boomers want to retire, and enjoy their golden years. A marked shift in investment strategies for the boomer generation has taken place. Look at the figures for goods and services that continue to thrive, and you will see that the energies once directed toward growing a small business into a profitable enterprise worthy of being sold to a multinational conglomerate have been redirected towards learning how to program a sophisticate autopilot system on a yacht. The money exists, but the wherewithal to invest it by building jobs that provide wages to workers has ebbed like the cash flow that once propped up Wall Street.

The idea that the boomer entrepreneurs will jump back up and return to their earlier mode of operation (birthing Patagonia's, Star bucks, etc) needs to be kiboshed. I don't see the boomers coming out of retirement, That leaves the forty somethings, and their offspring to pick up the slack, and get out there and start some new businesses to call our very own. The only problem we face is a distinct lack of liquidity. Simple. Tied up with the boomers. If they aren't spending it to on high tech transportation, or their children aren't ripping around the world looking for new forms of fun, they have managed to find hidey-holes in which to protect it, or they have decided to invest it passively in corporations still maintaining some semblance of a profit margin. What isn't being done with it? It isn't being used to start new businesses. Not in this country where the new jobs could benefit the citizens of America. Those same citizens who for years have purchased their products, worked in their retail stores, and watched mute as our wages either stagnated or shrank, and as benefits got cut or slashed.

Why don't the forty somethings have any money? I will hazard a few guesses. Wages could have something to do with it. National figures on wages indicate that our wages have failed to keep pace with inflation since the late eighties, and may have actually shrunk. What didn't shrink was our access to credit. Beautiful, lovely, oh so easy to get and spend credit was doled out to us by the same boomers who called the 40-odds slackers, and accused them of being the laziest generation to ever populate a planet. Yet, somehow, they sensed in this generation an untapped resource, and tap it they did but good. But far from being slackers, the forty somethings proved to be excellent workers as long as we were willing to relocate on a regular basis, and retrain frequently. I am a slacker baby, and I can attest to the fact that surviving through the nineties involved a lot of shuffling, learning new skills and a willingness to live on credit during lean times. Still, the lean times always passed. As the years passed it became easier to stomach the fact that wages never improved, companies grew and dissolved more rapidly than Kool-Aid crystals in a icy pitcher of water on a hot summer day, and that the dream of owning a home was only possible if you worked two jobs, and refrained from indulging in the luxury of kids that might eat into your limited income. Today, our generation can stand back and admire our achievements as we lament the facts that our gonads have nearly passed their primes, and the house we struggled to purchased will never be paid off in time for a retirement we no longer believe will ever take place. Our yards are barren of children, and the Play Station 4 just doesn't seem to ease the loss like it did in our thirties when a stiff drink and completing the next level of Doom did the trick.

Credit in return for a reasonable living wage. It seemed like a fair trade at the time. We always seemed to be able to pay off the debt. So what if the interest on the $1000 sofa (made in Malaysia for cheap), actually cost $1500 after the interest was paid. We could buy it, and we were happy. We aren't so happy now. The sofa fell apart, and at forty odd, the jobs aren't rolling down the pike. We liquidated our last 401K after we switched our last job to get us through to the next paycheck. Strange how the intervals between jobs got longer and longer. Where did the jobs go? Overseas? Maybe. Or perhaps they just dissolved. We saw that happen often enough throughout the nineties and early two thousands, only now no new jobs are replacing them. Did I mention that we sacrificed offspring during those tumultuous years? We certainly can't depend on our children to work for us like we did for the boomers.

We didn't live like kings or even D list actors. We just used credit to maintain a reasonably comfortable existence minus the matching end tables. When I speak of the use of credit cards by my fellow slackers, I am not alluding to the sort of credit card debt that involves ridiculous sums of money, or the purchase of ludicrous luxury items. I merely refer to the use of credit that extends the paycheck beyond paying for utilities, day care, medical bills and so forth. The purchase of items such as the above mentioned couch, the upscale garments that our corporate boss insists we wear to work, but for which they don't offer commiserate wages to provide for them, and the list goes on and on. I know many reading this understand very well my meaning on this subject. How did we allow this to happen?

We fell asleep at the wheel (probably after pulling two shifts, and clawing our way back in the morning from the land of No Doze). While we toiled and struggled to pay bills, keep ahead of the interest on our credit cards, and rolled away from our mates too exhausted to procreate or fearful that we would be unable to provide for them, politicians stealthily pushed their beds together with the movers and shakers of Wall Street. No king sized beds. Too obvious. Twin beds look so innocuous, but will do the trick in a pinch. Had we been better rested, we likely would have detected the scuff marks from repeated moves as they shuffled from one suitor to another, and from bedside to bedside. As Madonna's fame rose an faltered, Boy George underwent drug rehabilitation, the face of government was slowly and inexorably altered. The rules governing our economy underwent the mother of all plastic surgeries as the movers and shakers of the boomer generation strove to insure the bounty of their golden years of industry were well protected. Their children will be well provided for, whilst we slackers mourn the lack thereof. Don't believe me, then check the census numbers for our generation. Look around you, and count how many of your friends didn't have kids. How many of your parents generation got away with having less than 2.5 children?
So, to refocus on Below books comment: the government could have and should have done something to prevent the recession from occurring in the first place. So why didn't the government intercede before everything came completely unhinged, and our Federal Reserve went nearly bankrupt? Because the American public wasn't involved in their government. Its tough medicine to swallow, but it is true. We must stop referring to the government of These United States of America in the third person. We cannot afford to refer to it as "that" government, or to our governing body as "those people." It is our government, we elect those who serve, and all citizens have the power to participate in it. Participating will not be easy. One will be rebuffed, ignored and just plain laughed at by some who think they cannot be dislodged from power. One citizen who seeks change will have to join with many, and watch the mechanisms of government closely to detect the flaws, and pin point the weak links. We will need to watch our polling places and insist on clean elections. We must avoid being mollified by the swift, and easy stroke of the pen, and search state and federal Congressional records to see if real action has been taken.

What if we turned all of the energy expended in years of job searching, pavement pounding and inputting keystrokes for credit card pin numbers, and joined the youth who did manage to be born to regain our government? We don't want to pound the wealthiest percentile in poverty, we just want to collect back some of that interest we paid over the years to make ends meet, when our paychecks failed to pay the bills.

Yes, we can wake up and realize that, while we made use of our easily accessible credit, frolicked on our Play stations and kept up with the latest in virus protection, our roads are crumbling, our air traffic controller computers need replacement, and our parents can't seem to find a doctor that will accept Medicare/Medicaid. We get it now, and it is never to late to make amends. If not for us, for our children, and for those who seek to pursue the American dream in the future. If we could convince the upper echelon to part with enough of that once productive capital to start up even a tenth of the businesses they once grew and nourished so lovingly in the eighties and nineties, we would all benefit. Oh, we will pay them dividends, just not as much. And we will insist that the health of the company, its customers (satisfaction guaranteed), and its employees will take precedence over the shareholder (investment is after all a bit of a gamble - right?). No more book cooking, profit ballooning, and impossibly complicated ledgers, just companies selling goods and services. And finally, those businesses stay in the United States. We the people, unmercifully lobby our state and federal legislatures and demand the implementation of regulations to even the playing fields in commerce, trade and finance. The very rich don't have to give up their retirements, they just have to pay us some long overdue back wages. No more shiny baubles, beads or trinkets to lure us away from what is real and can be passed on to our children. You don't see them accepting wages in the form of Visa, Master card, or American Express. The boomers lived and still live by the credo, "pay yourself first." We don't have to be quite as greedy, but we certainly could stand to benefit by adopting enough of that motto to ensure that our citizens can enjoy their full share of the dream.