Don't Know Much About the Economy

The news is depressing me these days. Every single day, whenever I drive Ali to work, NPR brings me more news about the economy slowly making its way down to the bottom of the toilet bowl of recession or possibly depression. It's sort of soul-crushing and it eats away at you slowly. I go to work at a job that could be worse, but a job I nevertheless absolutely detest. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, other than the fact that a 3 dollar pay raise seemed like a good idea at the time and I was desperate to get away from Wal-Mart.

Now, oddly enough, I almost miss Wal-Mart. Almost. I think I tend to do better in jobs that keep me moving, walking around, busy, and interacting with people face to face. This telemarketing thing I think is just going to slowly eat away my brain and make me want to drive my car into a pylon or something. To be totally fair to Thomas L. Cardella and Associates, I haven't even been there a week, so I don't know everything there is to know yet, but I'm an impatient fool. I want an island in the midst of this economic hurricane and TLCA is better, but it's not that island.

But the economy, the economy. Times like this, I wish I knew a little more about economics- but it seems to me that no ones knows what to do and the proposed solutions are probably just going to make it worse. The Government is useless. Bless Obama for at least reaching out to the Republicans, but at the end of the day, he's not in charge down there, Pelosi, Reid and Company are. And we need a solid stimulus bill not a Christmas tree full of crap. Make it solid- infrastructure spending, tax cuts and precious little else. I think national sales tax holidays periodically throughout the coming year are a good idea. I think that payroll tax holidays are an even better idea because it'd get money to people right now- and you could structure them to phase them back in overtime as the economy gets better.

I despair that sanity can emerge from this. I hope and pray the news will turn around and the economy will pick up again and we won't have this cloud hanging above our heads anymore. Because it is a cloud, a dark one, it permeates the news and every little story trumpeted by the media causes ripples effects in the stock market and the economy gets worse. I think we need to all step back and start making lemonade out of lemons.