I found this photo and it’s like so many that we all recognise on sight. The Great Depression, right? Well, yes this one is of the Great Depression but why are these photos so attributable to this particular time period? The poverty and soup lines? If you notice the sign above the line of people in the photo… Free coffee and doughnuts for who? The unemployed!

 

   If  I remember my history, there was around a 20% unemployment rate during parts of the depression… We have some sketchy numbers put out by a government that is almost continuously caught lying to their employer, the American people. Should we believe the government numbers that tell us we only have 10% of our workers sitting at home? Maybe we should but that isn’t the point I’m going for… Why are our workers sitting at home instead of standing in line for free coffee and doughnuts to start a day of feverish job hunting? Why should they, they receive government assistance in the form of a check each monthand they can often even purchase food on a little government issued debit card, so as not to have to be singled out at the grocery store with food stamps and the associated stigma.

 

   Trust me, this is not in anyway aimed at the unemployed worker but at the government. I realise that times are tough and no one is immune to the possibility of needing assistance. It’s the form of assistance that is being offered that I take issue with! It appears from the photo that these poor souls were indeed also receiving assistance but from a private charity or even a church… Heaven forbit we acknowledge that our churches ever played a positive role in public life…

 

   Is there a possibility that we have a similar situation on our hands now and this is actually already a ”Depression?” As I’ve pointed out we wouldn’t know we were in any financial hardship by looking at the Shopping Mall parking lot! What if the general public could see into the living rooms of our fellow Americans. Are there any cars still in the driveways of your neighbors homes when you leave for work? There should be 1 in every 10th driveway, according to the government numbers.

 

   We can argue about the validity of the published unemployment numbers but it wouldn’t do much good. We can only accept them at face value and do our own research if we choose to go beyond that. I truly believe that it’s in the governments best interest to keep us looking straight down the road, don’t want us noticing a line forming outside a bank or even a food bank for that matter.

 

   Our society will continue to hold itself together as long as our surroundings don’t change to much. We may not even mind if the local Chevrolet dealer has been replaced with an independent used car lot. Vacancies are to be expected and so we don’t notice them much either… Let me assure you – “All is not well”, the patient is having trouble breathing but we are being told that everything is fine, just get back to the mall where you belong and this will work itself out!

 

   I maintain the opinion that our finite resources are being stretched to the breaking point and we can only carry on the business as usual charade for a few more months. All of the traditional excuses for a lacking economy will soon be used up as we enter the spring months. We have to get our workers back to their J-O-B’s or we will go beyond the point of no return. However, I fail to see where the jobs are going to come from?

 

   Let’s look at an example… I was recently seated next to a man on a airline flight who is in the road construction business. He had worked hard and owned his own business until a year or so prior to our conversation. The down turn in the economy had forced him to close his business. Granted he only operated a small company, several people besides himself lost their livelihood. Through the conversation it became apparent that he was feeling his fortune had turned around… He was hired as a foreman for a large company in the next state that was using TARP funds that were designated to the state for road improvement projects. This story had apparently had a happy ending for him and his family…

 

   Hey, that sounds great I told him and we parted company at the end of our flight. I am genuinely happy that he has found relief to his financial troubles, I wish I could check back in with this man in a year and see how it has all played out! Those TARP funds were actually suppose to make alotof those type of positions available and I see the logic behind the idea… I disagree with it but I do understand what the government was attempting to do. Just like the government, I’m tempted to use my credit card on those S-L-O-W months in my business. If I just took a credit advance and put it my bank account, my bottom line would look and feel a lot better… WAIT! Wouldn’t I have to pay that money back with interest and become a lot broker than I was already. So you see TARP is as short term a solution as me using my credit card to make up for personal budget shortfalls…

 

   Where I was going with the story about the road construction contractor was this… He may have been helped by this type of make work program but we have people out of work in all sectors? What about the guy who works in the tech field? Please don’t give me the story about how the tech sector isn’t being widely effected by this economy – BS! Don’t forget that I live in the Seattle area and we are home to a variety of LARGE tech companies and I have worked with employees of many of them. They are keeping their job worries a little more quite but these companies are seeing lots of lay-offs just like everyone else. Are these folks that have been used to making six figure incomes going to be employed rebuilding bridges to nowhere? Even if they had the skills to be hired into those opportunities, they would have to take a significant pay cut. This mean that they would have a hard time making ends meet – but hey they would get to go to work each morning and return to their car each evening after their home was foreclosed on…

 

   We can’t spend ourselves out of this mess! We need a real solution because these unemployed workers are there whether we see them standing in a long soup line or not. Look through the family Rolodex and see if you can’t find friends and family members that are either out of work or hanging by a thread.

 

   A soup line is a soup line! Actually a soup line run by the government is far worse than the soup lines of years past. Government soup is far more expensive than any soup my church would be ladling out. Our bureaucracy would be a committee who went to Costco to purchase the soup and another committee to serve it to the needy. Compare that structure to what it takes the government system to administer all those workers sitting at home… Like I said a soup line by any other name is still a soup line, except that this one is doing more harm than good!

 

Prepper