On The Money, Its the Stupid Economy

On The Money

Financial Advice for the Working-Class

Its the Stupid Economy

Every media outlet in America, it seems, reports movement on the Dow, NASDAC and S+P indexes every half-hour at least. Every Friday we get the New Unemployment Claims numbers, and we now have enough monthly economic reports that we hear about one every day. If its not the monthly home foreclosure number, than its the durable goods report, the jobs survey, existing home sales, new home sales, new building permits, consumer spending or the trade deficit. And don’t forget “consumer sentiment” the number that tells us how optimistic we are about the economy.

What is there to be optimistic about? Everyone is so focused on “the economy”, not because its killing us, and the planet, but because they are so desperately afraid that it might stop growing. Have we lost our minds? This is like being in the hospital with cancer, asking your doctor how you are doing, and hearing the response: “Well, I’m afraid that tumor of yours is growing rather sluggishly right now. I think we need to suppress your immune system to see if we can encourage some more vigorous growth in that malignancy.”

The economy is killing us, and the economy is killing the planet. No one denies that. How do we manage to to ignore the breakdown of the biological support systems of the planet, and the steady decline in the quality of our lives, to instead focus on protecting the disease that is killing us? It’s completely insane, and the longer we nurture this disease, the worse it’s going to get for us, and for the rest of the community of life on planet Earth.

Its the stupid economy that fouls the air we breathe, pollutes our rivers, and fills our dumps with mountains of plastic garbage. Its the stupid economy that makes us set our blasted alarm clocks every morning and spend half of our waking hours at work, for the privilege of living paycheck to paycheck in a rented room. Every time things get better for the stupid economy, things get worse for us, so why are we so damned concerned that our gigantic global economy, with its gigantic global appetite, only get bigger?

Isn’t the stupid economy already doing enough to pry money out of your pocket? Don’t you already work hard enough, long enough, and put up with enough bullshit at your job? Think about it: Does “the economy” exist to help people trade goods and services to meet their needs, or do we exist to serve the needs of “the stupid economy?

Either way, for the stupid economy to grow, it will need to exploit more of the world’s resources, create more pollution, and consume more of our lives. Yes, in order to grow the stupid economy, we will all have to work harder, pay more, and expect less of life. In return for that sacrifice, we can marvel at the enormous and ever growing magnitude of the stupid economy, We can take pride in watching everything beautiful and natural about life, cut down, ground into currency, and funneled into the bank accounts of the richest 400 families on earth, knowing that they couldn’t have done it without us, and then we can die for them.

I’ve got a better idea: lets shrink the stupid economy till its small enough to drown in a bathtub, and instead, work on growing our lives back. There’s a view of the stupid economy that’s On The Money.

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