Sep 05 2008
Opinions: Broken Economy.
Loading ...The U.S. economy is constantly heading downhill and people are losing their jobs left and right. Virtually everyone in the country has been affected one way or another, and with the U.S. hurting as bad as it is, the rest of the world is suffering as well. At every level times are tough, and while some people have more money than others, you can’t deny that even the rich are feeling the cost of increased food prices, gas and so on.
My wife works for the University of Florida, which is considered a Major University. It is a state funded, public university with an undergraduate student body of roughly 34,612 (Wikipedia) and 15,081 postgraduates (Wikipedia) and has a wide range of popular college-level athletics and student programs. Due to the financial situation of the school, they are looking at doing major job cuts for the faculty later this year which puts her job in jeopardy. This is becoming a typical situation across the nation. Even big establishments and jobs once thought to be comfy and secure aren’t.
What I’ve been most confused about when it comes to this country-wide crisis for employment is if the jobs are constantly disappearing, who are the ones doing the jobs that others are getting released to free up funds for? Lemme explain..
Let’s say I am working for Business A, and I’m in a management position. It is my job to hire employees, pay employees, schedule work hours, place orders for restocking of items that we may be selling, and acquire new items. Now given the current economic situation, several employees below me have been let go, we’ll say 5 of 15. I’m down to 10. Then my number gets called, and they are out a manager and 5 other employees. That is 10 people left to do what took 16 people to do, and the 10 people remaining don’t have the experience or ability to do my job. Why cut my job? And why cut the other peoples jobs? You’re hurting yourself more, right?
Let me try this again, with another example. A major car company has a work plant. They build the cars. They have 10 thousand employees, and they shut down the entire plant to save money. 10 thousand people are out of a job and the company saves lots of money, right? That is 10 thousand people now unable to afford to purchase the very cars they were building in the first place, and since nobody is working on building those cars there, there are no cars to sell. That makes things worse, right? You’re taking away the ability to purchase items and taking away items to be purchased. Absolutely no flow of money either way in this situation. How is that helpful to anyone?
Gas prices are one of the main root issues in our economy right now, and I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t agree. The high gas prices get added on every items price tag at the end of the day, which is why a gallon of milk has been so damn expensive. It costs money to transport the heavy milk from the farms to the milk processing plants, then from the plants to the store. Even cabs have raised their rates. What used to be a $15 cab ride can now run you up to $20, or more. And don’t even get me started on how much of a difference cab drivers are showing now compared to the lower fuel prices of a couple years ago. Damn near killed a cabby for yelling at my wife over her not tipping him more than a couple bucks. It’s a tip, be thankful!
I could sit here all day and talk to you about what the problems are, list off personal stories about my own financial troubles, but none of that is any good anymore. Those with the power to do any real good refuse to listen to the real problems, and would rather talk about Iraq, Afghanistan, and things that will eventually cost our country more money. Help the homeland economy? That isn’t on the agenda. We’ll consider another tax rebate check, but that’ll do nothing more than let a bunch of poor people go out and buy some game consoles, sit at home and become distracted by a game or the TV and hopefully everyone will forget we’re in a failing economy.
How about some real fixes! Need a place to start? Why don’t you start with the broken educational system in the U.S. and give teachers incentives for being good teachers. I’m talking real, worthwhile raises and bonuses. I’m talking boosting a school districts funding. I’m talking doing something as small as boost local school funding to provide more regional coverage of local school athletics which drives up local support. I’m talking about giving students better learning material and more access to computers on a broader scale. Let’s take $5 billion extra for each state and dump it into their public school systems and watch what happens.
Short on good teachers? Loosen the educational requirements of a teacher and setup programs to identify prospective teachers on a personality level, rather than pure knowledge. A fun teacher will help you learn things better than a stuffy teacher who will stick a book in your face and walk away. Give them extra tax breaks for being teachers, give them 100% free medical care at any doctor they choose to visit, and at any hospital they want to use. Beyond the failure that is Medicaid and Medicare, and give them total freedom. With worthwhile incentives, you can lure in great teachers to help build the future leaders of the country and they could prepare those future leaders how they should be prepared, and maybe we might not end up with the batch of failures that we’re dealing with right now.
The foundation for any great country is education, and if you can’t figure out that 1+1 = 2, and if you can’t read The Cat and The Hat then how do you expect to do any sort of leading in any possible avenue in your life? You can’t. You do need a certain level of basic skills in your life to succeed and if the schools are incapable to fulfill those requirements and needs of the kids then something needs to be done.
I don’t mind sharing our past success to help the future of another country or two become brighter in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I think enough is enough and that we are at the point and have long since been at the point where we are wasting insane amounts of money of a cause that has already been accomplished. Instead, that money desperately needs to be dumped into the economy otherwise those two countries may be some of the last we’ll ever be able to help and we might be the ones in dire need of outside assistance. How would you like that?
The sad fact is that there are many problems in the countries economy, and that it will take many years to recover from them. We just need people dedicated to actually fixing the problems instead of giving the country more and slapping a tiny little band-aid on a critical wound. We just need those people to come into power and take the bull by the horns and get the jobs done. Until then — we’re screwed.
I see a dead U.S. Economic System.
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