2008 and today

I was just thinking about how lucky I actually am economically-wise. I mean, I have a steady government job with medical benefits and I spend less money than I make. It seems like I have it made compared to a lot of people I know or have heard about.

It's awful what's been happening since the big economic meltdown in 2008. It's just hard for me to quite believe that no one in power saw this coming. I admit that the second Bush administration scared me from the start. Dubya surrounded himself by yes-men and pandered to his vision of what the world SHOULD be, not what it actually was. Nor did he and and his team have the ability to make long-term plans based in reality instead of fantasy to fulfill their vision. I could go on and on about Dubya and his meery men and women (and I'm sure I will in a later post), but he was not the only one at fault.

I've heard a lot of people complaining that no one could have predicted the 2008 collapse. That's just not true. People did predict it. Several award-winning economists predicted it. The sad part it that some of these economists had been making correct predictions of economic trends for decades, and still no policy maker wanted to listen to them. For more specifics, look up Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, both Nobel prize winning economists with new books out on the current situation.

Okay, so we can't say that we weren't warned. The truth is that no one wanted to hear it. The politicians were remaking the market into their ideal while pleasing their wealthy campaign-funding consituents. Traders knew on some level that, if they did the responsible long-term planning thing, their short-term profits would be cut. Who wants the party to end? Why should we look inot our policies and our mortgage and lending policies while we're making so much money?

Something that is often forgotten by high-minded idealists in any field in my experience is that people aren't perfect. As a general rule of thumb, people focus on the short-term and don't worry about the long-term, expecially when working in groups. Honestly, how many times have universities decided to put off repairs on an older building for yet another year in order to maintaing the annual pay raises? Or politicians focused so much on winning the next election that they don't think about what their votes and rhetoric will actually mean twenty years down the line? Or people selling their bodies on the street in order to feed themselves? It's not pretty or idealistic or high-minded, but humans can't just be wished into behaving the way we think they should!

Enough ranting abuot the past. The present administration is having problems. They are, as a group, inexperienced in political maneuvering or holdovers from the previous administration. At least their hearts seem to be in the right place. At least they're trying. Some people think the current administration is being too indecisive and not getting anything done. I would like to remind those people that the legislature in this country has the lion's share of the power, with good reason. And right now, the legislature seems more interested in tearing itself to pieces than actually coming up with some realistic, workable compromises.