The Land Of Ozzzzzzzzzzz

I sleep so much better at night now, knowing that the nation's Chief Executive Officer, with all his many years of executive experience, responsibility and business acumen, is at the helm of our ship of state.

What? He has no business experience? He has no impressive record of achievement and success? He's only had a couple of jobs besides running for office? How could that be?

Well, I sleep better at night knowing that General Motors and Chrysler, two of three companies forming the bedrock of our auto industry, are once again viable since their billion dollar loans. Whew! I'm so glad they escaped bankruptcy, which, we were assured in January, would send Chicken Little into the streets and completely devastate our weakened economy.

What? GM is now facing almost-certain bankruptcy after all? Wasn't keeping it OUT of bankruptcy the rationalization for the original government loans? Now it's the answer? Are you telling me that a constipated, bloated, overfed, overgrown organization like GM couldn't come up with a completely new, innovative and profitable business model in two months? The same company who hasn't come up with anything really new in 20 years? (I've seen a corporation 10,000 times smaller than GM not be able to come up with new letterhead in two months.)

Well, surely I'll sleep better knowing that our weary troops are coming home from Iraq. Thank God we won't be putting lives at risk and spending all those billions every month fighting in that troubled region.

What? We're escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Really? After all that campaign rhetoric? Good grief! And we want to be friends with Iran? How does Israel feel about that?

At least I'll be sleeping better knowing that in this economic climate no reasonable, right-thinking, brilliant economics team would propose massive new government programs to solve every problem that exists in our society. Of course we're going to try to get back on our financial feet before we institute new health care reforms, education programs, paid volunteer programs and pay for all those little piggy earmarks. After all, we need a healthy economy with stable revenues before we wallow in all that pork, don't we? At least the "average American family" won't be facing new taxes. Thank goodness.

You're kidding. All that stuff is actually in the proposed budget -- while the whole world economy flounders like, well, a beached flounder? But only those who make $250,000 and up will be hit with a tax increase? Wait -- doesn't that mean most small business owners, who create 70% of new jobs? By all means, tax the investors, tax the job providers, tax the backbone of the economy.

I'll have to remember to set my alarm as I'll be sleeping so soundly knowing that members of Congress, our elected representatives who speak for us and act for us, will be on the job in Washington. They are all so trustworthy, intelligent, honest, ethical souls, aren't they? Look at how they all reacted to the AIG bonuses. They're my kind of folk.

No! You don't mean they actually took PAC money from the very corporations they loaned taxpayer money to then lambasted for their actions? Those nasty big businesses who honored their employment contracts and paid bonuses? Well, I guess a member of Congress has to be re-elected. We can't fault them. We don't seem to ever get rid of them, either.

Come to think of it, I haven't slept a wink since Election Day, 2008. I wonder why?

Middle Class Woes?

Recently, CBS Sunday Morning's show profiled the economic situation of America's middle class, which, from the reporter's point of view, isn't as financially secure as their parents' generation, with health care and college tuition said to play significant roles in the decline.

As usual, this "in depth" segment was given only ten or fifteen minutes -- hardly long enough to provide verifiable data, let alone any historical or cultural perspective. The single-agenda telescoping of facts and lack of context in this type of "news" presentation quite simply makes me crazy.

One of the families profiled lives in Ohio, a couple who both work, who has four children, two of whom are in college and cost the parents $45,000 per year for living expenses (not including tuition loans). The couple's combined gross income is $80,000, so their struggle appears obvious; yet, the home shown in the video was very attractive, decorated with what looked like fairly new furniture, and the parents were themselves comfortably padded, indicating that little starvation was going on.

The reporter went to great lengths to elicit pathos for this poor family bearing such a burden and not "getting ahead" as their parents' generation did, but only "staying even."

While I applaud the family's efforts to educate their children, I have to wonder.... there was no mention made of the kids working to help support themselves through college life. They obviously attend on a generous parentship -- to the tune of $22,500 each annually. That says to me, private apartment, car, cool clothes, very few Tap Ramen meals and plenty of spending money. You just lost my sympathy vote, middle class Ohio family.

Even in my generation, it was not assumed that all kids would attend college. It was our hope and dream, certainly, but was not a given. It was also assumed that for the "average middle class family" college attendance would presuppose a financial burden -- one that could be planned for and one that could also be shared by the student

When compared to my parents' generation (those who lived through the Great Depression) America's middle class is drowning in consumerism and encumbered to death by their aspirations, acquisitions and credit card debt.

Maybe it's my perspective that is out of whack here. Maybe "middle class" really does mean that a family should be able to enjoy an expensive vacation every year, buy each new technogadget on the market, reside in a new home with every amenity, eat dinner out ten times a month, resist bearing much of the burden of health care, and finally relax in a comfortable, secure retirement. Oh - of course they would also send little Brianna and Cody to private primary and secondary schools, then on to pricey universities without expecting the kids to work.

It would be easy here to wax nostalgic for the less complex world of the parents of the boomer generation -- those WW II vets' families who truly did struggle to build a successful American middle class through very hard work, expert money management (translation: squeezing the nickel until the buffalo moaned) and an old-fashioned concept of actually having cold cash in hand before buying something. My in-laws love to reminisce about that time in their lives, and one of the primary factors of their eventual financial success was buying what they needed, not necessarily what they (or their children) wanted.

Life then was not yet controlled by consumerism. Madison Avenue did not yet have a death grip on America's collective soul, although certainly that post-war era was the nursery of the mass marketing industry. It's taken two solid generations for the hard lessons learned by the children of the Depression to morph into our culture of "I must have everything, and I must have it right now."

Depending on which source of online statistics you reference, the U.S. is either the second or the fifth richest nation in the world. When mirrored against the world's population, America's middle class is wealthy, and when compared to figures from the Third World, it's obscenely rich. Our tax burden, however, isn't as harsh as many countries, we pay less for fuel and food than many European countries, and while we do pay through our middle class noses for health care, it's still damn good health care overall.

If we looked honestly and objectively at our middle class lifestyle, at all the things we have that make our lives comfortable and easy, at all the thousand ways we find to spend (or charge) discretionary dollars, at the ways we pamper our kids (to their detriment), I think we'd have to admit that we middle classers have it pretty darn good these days.

If we're not "getting ahead" as our parents did, I don't think it's due to the economic climate of America or health care or anything beyond our control. We simply don't live with the discipline and restraint our parents and grandparents had. We want far more, we have far more, and according to CBS News, we deserve even more... and more... and more.

What I've found in my experience is that more... more work, more debt, more possessions, more responsibilities, simply equals more stress and brings less value to my life. Certainly the frantic pace of our American life is driven by the "more" concept. How lovely by contrast is the title of a collection of work by the Zen poet Ryokan, "One Robe, One Bowl."