9/7/11
9/6/11
9/5/11
Working for The Man
Working in the fields you get your facts learned...
and I got my facts learned real good.
This economic climate is like the weather, we have no control over it. The storm is gusting winds, huffing and puffing and blowing houses down, rain is flooding the basements and lower floors and no amount of sandbagging is going to stop it. Politicians and bureaucrats egos may lead them to believe they can do something about it but most of the population has figured out that we're in a disruptive contraction that will run it's own course.
Personally I don't believe the unemployment figure is going to remain stagnant and only go up or down a notch or two as the so-called experts predict. It's widely agreed that unemployment is going to be a problem for a long time and it is my opinion it is going to go higher. Already it is higher than official numbers reflect. The broken record is that this is an economic contraction due to overleveraging of debt by individuals and government. If people are not employed they cannot pay debt or taxes. That is a fact.
Our country has created people with a mindset of a job or career working for a large or medium sized employer with an implied contract of benefits and a pension. The Man. No longer is he willing to carry the contract though. This administration has also done everything it can to kill many of the remaining average micro entrepreneurial enterprises as well as small businesses out there that might have employed a few people or kept a family going. A "jobs program?" Really? My additional thought is there is no point in retraining or educating for careers unlikely to exist in the coming years. Working for The Man is past tense. Small businesses must rework their way around the obstructions. Thinking otherwise is a delusion.
Individuals work in the present to plan for a different future.
The people who are thriving and will thrive are those who are thinking creatively while looking down the road and taking control now of what they can. They aren't putting themselves into debt or deficit spending and if they are in that position they are digging their way out of it. The Americans who are making it are those who are achievement oriented, still have a sense of reward for hard work and self-reliance, cutting a swath for their own path. Perhaps that means working at a job now as a means to an end but the end game is not to work for someone else in the sense we have been. The primary intention at this juncture is a future forward assessment of skills that are of value and develop them alongside additional ones.
What a thinking ahead person is doing in one way or another is fashioning tools in every moment of spare time. They're figuring out how to make a living or already are in the coming new period and create a different way of life. In stormy weather they're holding fast to values in order to rebuild lives above the flood line. There is not a politician or bureaucrat that can provide the ingredients necessary to prepare and act to accomplish the reconstruction required. While this economic contraction is running its course simultaneously individuals and communities are reinventing themselves on their own. People are or will be working for themselves, either in their own enterprises or as free agents for another enterprise by choice. The government can't machinate that. Only individuals and communities can engineer the kind of renovation our economy needs for our country to fully function again.
(With apologies to Springsteen on this Labor Day.)
and I got my facts learned real good.
This economic climate is like the weather, we have no control over it. The storm is gusting winds, huffing and puffing and blowing houses down, rain is flooding the basements and lower floors and no amount of sandbagging is going to stop it. Politicians and bureaucrats egos may lead them to believe they can do something about it but most of the population has figured out that we're in a disruptive contraction that will run it's own course.
Personally I don't believe the unemployment figure is going to remain stagnant and only go up or down a notch or two as the so-called experts predict. It's widely agreed that unemployment is going to be a problem for a long time and it is my opinion it is going to go higher. Already it is higher than official numbers reflect. The broken record is that this is an economic contraction due to overleveraging of debt by individuals and government. If people are not employed they cannot pay debt or taxes. That is a fact.
Individuals work in the present to plan for a different future.
The people who are thriving and will thrive are those who are thinking creatively while looking down the road and taking control now of what they can. They aren't putting themselves into debt or deficit spending and if they are in that position they are digging their way out of it. The Americans who are making it are those who are achievement oriented, still have a sense of reward for hard work and self-reliance, cutting a swath for their own path. Perhaps that means working at a job now as a means to an end but the end game is not to work for someone else in the sense we have been. The primary intention at this juncture is a future forward assessment of skills that are of value and develop them alongside additional ones.
(With apologies to Springsteen on this Labor Day.)
9/2/11
9/1/11
8/31/11
Stop Motion Economy
Square dancing in a monetary blur...
We're weathering a time that not even the experts and historians who study these things understand what is really happening with our global economy. If they claim to they're either bluffing, deluding themselves or lying. We are in an historical upheaval of epic proportions that contains common threads with similar chronological events of the past yet is different because it is distinctly in the here and now.
It is disquieting to our daily lives and will not be truly understood until the future. Meanwhile we are stuck in the present square dancing with partners we may or may not know and doing our best to keep time with the fiddle at a hoedown we'd rather not participate in. We're romping in a blur of light and dark, clarity and reflection, in a utilitarian fashion to keep our balance.
On the continuum of personal finances it's fair to say that many people are not being truthful to themselves or others. An old ethic that one never talks about money has revived with a strong resurgence; probably because there isn't a lot left to brag about. Almost everyone has been affected in some way and if they act and say as if they're not, then they are either bluffing, deluding themselves or lying. No one will come out of this decade without some markings of having changed for better or worse.
Meanwhile all we can do is square dance in a haze making sure we keep time and keep our footing while we whirl around. It's "Places all. Bow to your corner, bow to your partner, three hands up and around you go. Promenade around the ring, big foot up and little foot down, make that big foot jar the ground, back you go and forward again. Allemande left with the old left hand, meet your partner with a great big smile, promenade across the floor and now your home, bow to your partner, bow to the gent across the hall. And that is all."
Remaining positive during a hazy tenuous new economic age that expands beyond our known boundaries goes a long way to calming the disquietude of the storm. Coming up clean, being honest and truthful will not explain the disorder of economic, social and political change of the big picture but will comfort us individually on the home front.
We're weathering a time that not even the experts and historians who study these things understand what is really happening with our global economy. If they claim to they're either bluffing, deluding themselves or lying. We are in an historical upheaval of epic proportions that contains common threads with similar chronological events of the past yet is different because it is distinctly in the here and now.
It is disquieting to our daily lives and will not be truly understood until the future. Meanwhile we are stuck in the present square dancing with partners we may or may not know and doing our best to keep time with the fiddle at a hoedown we'd rather not participate in. We're romping in a blur of light and dark, clarity and reflection, in a utilitarian fashion to keep our balance.
On the continuum of personal finances it's fair to say that many people are not being truthful to themselves or others. An old ethic that one never talks about money has revived with a strong resurgence; probably because there isn't a lot left to brag about. Almost everyone has been affected in some way and if they act and say as if they're not, then they are either bluffing, deluding themselves or lying. No one will come out of this decade without some markings of having changed for better or worse.Meanwhile all we can do is square dance in a haze making sure we keep time and keep our footing while we whirl around. It's "Places all. Bow to your corner, bow to your partner, three hands up and around you go. Promenade around the ring, big foot up and little foot down, make that big foot jar the ground, back you go and forward again. Allemande left with the old left hand, meet your partner with a great big smile, promenade across the floor and now your home, bow to your partner, bow to the gent across the hall. And that is all."
8/30/11
8/29/11
Moving On
When a city has lost a way of life...
How a western city became a model of modern boom and bust.
There comes a time when it is time to move on, get back to where you started from and remove yourself from the once small city that grew up around you and become a big one. You can't change a place, only your attitude toward it or remove yourself from it, especially when you feel as if you no longer belong there. You have the choice, the control and the ability to move on and improve your way of life. Living is not to be wasted in a place you don't want to be because it is no longer what it once was.
This city and I have a long history with each other. There was a brief moment of time in the late sixties and seventies when it was just the right size and mix of people. It still retained an air of a western way of life, live and let live, without being totally bereft of the conveniences of city life. In hindsight real change began to occur after the floods of November 1978 through March 1979 which paralyzed traffic in the metro area. This was followed by floods the next winter season of 1979-1980 where flood waters were polluted by sewage. The infrastructure couldn't sustain what growth that had developed. This was also an era of unexpected political change coupled with public reaction to the floods and the legacy that led to is too lengthy for this writing. The summary is the infrastructure was built and the people did come. In droves. That was the beginning of a series of events that brought us explosive growth that really detonated after the recession of 1992-93.
The nineties was a pivotal period when most of my family left and returned to our original hometown of Prescott. I fled for Tucson that by 2000 started beginning to quickly replicate the frenzied thoughtless growth of Phoenix. The few things it had going for it couldn't be fought off by the housing boom that was occurring all over the country, particularly the western and southern regions. Fueled by subprime money coupled with shrinking employment made for a combustible mixture that caused me to leave in 2005 and return to Phoenix for better employment. It was at the height of the craziest years to be here when it seemed as if every inch of the city was crammed with people and oversized houses and automobiles. The proverbial jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Even with good employment it was impossible for people like myself who were not borrowers to keep up with the pace and cost of living.
We are a contemporary ghost town now. Although there is some job growth in low paying jobs, higher paying employment and many well educated people have fled. Housing is essentially frozen, suspended in some tract that no one really knows what is going to happen. There is not a political answer although we have elected city officials and bureaucrats who have an over-inflated view of themselves and their sense of control. We are an urban heat island with searing heat summers, year round pollution and rarely does it rain now in the urban core to wash of the dust and ash.
The economic crisis hit hard here and by now the entire country has awakened to the fact that this is a long term disruption that will take a decade to resolve itself into whatever the new average standard will be. Since I didn't buy into the frenzy that preceded the crash I am maintaining and have preserved enough to be able to build for the future. My attitude has adjusted to accept that I may be here a little longer. I am of the fortunate ones not living on borrowed money or time and that I am not alone and share a life with someone else with similar ideas. Neither one of us grew up in large city Arizona but the smaller cities of the state. When I left in the nineties I didn't feel as if I belonged here and haven't since I returned. It is now time for a call to action and a plan to remove ourselves as soon as we are able.
How a western city became a model of modern boom and bust.
There comes a time when it is time to move on, get back to where you started from and remove yourself from the once small city that grew up around you and become a big one. You can't change a place, only your attitude toward it or remove yourself from it, especially when you feel as if you no longer belong there. You have the choice, the control and the ability to move on and improve your way of life. Living is not to be wasted in a place you don't want to be because it is no longer what it once was.
This city and I have a long history with each other. There was a brief moment of time in the late sixties and seventies when it was just the right size and mix of people. It still retained an air of a western way of life, live and let live, without being totally bereft of the conveniences of city life. In hindsight real change began to occur after the floods of November 1978 through March 1979 which paralyzed traffic in the metro area. This was followed by floods the next winter season of 1979-1980 where flood waters were polluted by sewage. The infrastructure couldn't sustain what growth that had developed. This was also an era of unexpected political change coupled with public reaction to the floods and the legacy that led to is too lengthy for this writing. The summary is the infrastructure was built and the people did come. In droves. That was the beginning of a series of events that brought us explosive growth that really detonated after the recession of 1992-93.
The economic crisis hit hard here and by now the entire country has awakened to the fact that this is a long term disruption that will take a decade to resolve itself into whatever the new average standard will be. Since I didn't buy into the frenzy that preceded the crash I am maintaining and have preserved enough to be able to build for the future. My attitude has adjusted to accept that I may be here a little longer. I am of the fortunate ones not living on borrowed money or time and that I am not alone and share a life with someone else with similar ideas. Neither one of us grew up in large city Arizona but the smaller cities of the state. When I left in the nineties I didn't feel as if I belonged here and haven't since I returned. It is now time for a call to action and a plan to remove ourselves as soon as we are able.
8/26/11
8/25/11
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