2nd Great Depression?

Hello ProgressiveUsers -

Am I the only one who notices a trend in our nation's history of recessions?

Tonight I was out exercising and passed a very large house. In the driveway were two large SUVs, several small potted palm trees for sale, a HUGE stone foundation, and I couldn't help but notice the glow of an enormous plasma screen TV through the front window. Above this was a 2nd story window, which attracted me because it, too, glowed with the aquatic blue of another massive television set as it prominently displayed the Warner Brothers logo.

This got me to thinking about what has quickly become a pedigree to run on this election cycle; a phrase we have quickly become accustomed to hearing: "living beyond our means."

To be certain, I get a bit testy when I hear politicians, very often from the "red" side of the ticket, blathering about how your average Joe is as responsible for the current state of the economy as are "Fannie and Freddie." It is my opinion that the corporations, Wall Street powerhouses, CEOs, and politicians share an inordinately greater responsibility for our crippling state than do average people, and I don't say that because middle-class Americans have less power to shape the economy on an individual basis, either. Average Americans have been duped by false promises and by massive larger entities that also "lived beyond their means.” I understand the philosophy behind Obi Wan Kenobi's famous observatory question "Who's more foolish, the fool or the one who follows him?" However, I also feel that in this case, a great majority of the top-feeders who have gotten away with murder are not "fools" at all, but shrewd, hawkish individuals who are good at looking out for themselves, and who are willing to bankrupt, literally and figuratively, anyone to do it.

They knew they could get away with it, too. What better time to do so unscathed than during the reign of the Bush Crime Family? Don’t buy it? Who got bailed out, here? Not American citizens, that's for sure. That is, unless the powers that be are waiting for the "trickle-down" effect of this lifeline on the fat middle of America, but I somehow doubt even that is the case. This is what we get for electing rich elite who don't care about us.

That said, as I looked up at that house, an emblem of excess, I also came to . . . well not really a realization, but more of a crystallization of my sense of what is really going on here. The responsibility the average American has in this horrifying utter mess can be summed up in very crude fashion: we are reaping the consequences of what we've sown for the last fifty years. It just may have come quicker because of the last eight years or so of corruption.

Have you heard stories from grandparents or great-grandparents regarding just how people in this country lived during the Great Depression? I have. I've heard about saving bacon grease from the skillet, tying cardboard on the soles of your shoes so they can "go the extra mile," and making things using good old-fashioned "elbow grease" (another holdover in our collective phraseology from the Depression?). Enter Franklin Delanore Roosevelt and the New Deal. The creation of social security and of an intricate quilt of social reform and programming that the “Right” (let’s call them the “reds”) have decried since prior to the Cold War (albeit with more vitriol since the specter of McCarthyism entered the American lexicon).

Work ethic was high, enhanced by the hardship of the Depression itself and of the sacrifice and amazing production that was necessitated by World War II. Rosie the Riveter is remembered, very accurately so, as the woman who motivated the U.S. into an economic powerhouse that outlasted the U.S.S.R. in an economic war of attrition. That says something. While our boys were overseas, women, men, and even children scrounged, shopped, and produced their brains out. When the war was over and the men came home, the United States embarked on an era of prosperity, enhanced and possibly prolonged by a still unceasing persistence, healthy work ethic, a frugality that is nothing short of admirable. Consider that so many of our grandmothers saved things out of habit until the day they died. Consider that, as many of our elders have passed away, many baffled surviving family members have found estates and garages housing an unbelievable amount of seemingly useless things; things that he rest of us today would resign to . . .well . .. to the landfill. That stick-to-itiveness (another "Depression" era holdover in our language?) has served us well, until now . . . . .

Quaint as some of these traditions now seem to us, they could likely have helped us in preventing this economic crumbling (and make no mistake, that' exactly what it is). Truly, we HAVE been living way beyond our means. I know families whose members have taken out second mortgages on their houses, and only because they want to live in the biggest house they could (or couldn't) afford. I know young couples who have bought houses they couldn't afford, then had children and continued to max out their credit cards until they could make interest-only payments. Then they go out and buy blue-ray DVD players at Best Buy, finance SUVs with only a spouse and an occasional dog to haul around, and take bi-annual cruises to Cancun.

I remember going to college and being absolutely amazed at the 17 and 18-year-olds who seemed to magically be able to afford not just SUVs, but BMWs. Not only that, but they had MASSIVE, cutting-edge sound systems pumping arrogant rave from their trunks. I remember sitting in class, the walls vibrating and the poor professor having to put his lecture on hold as one of those BMWs went by while I sat in my chair thinking the Rapture was upon us. I remember another professor telling his class repeatedly "Don't buy STUFF. You don't need STUFF." This was an older generation warning a younger, even more self-important generation that they were living like the upper 1st when they had the income of the lower 2nd. They were right. Everyone LOOKED rich but worked in the mall.

And don't go telling me they all got these cars as graduation presents. That doesn't hold any water, as this was their PARENTS living beyond their means.

It took fifty years, an unnecessary war, the annihilation of unions, a free-for-all on Wall Street, a Reagan revolution, and an administration full of CROOKS to do it, but our excessive lifestyles have caught up with us. As it turns out, the warnings of all those environmentalists that we are going to have to change our lifestyles to save the planet has been good advice not just for the planet, but as a means to protect ourselves from financial predators and our own, modern predilection for excess.

For future reference, when everyone drives a car the size of a tractor to work, it's time to worry. They leave work, go on a shopping spree at Sacs, pick up the newest model iPod or Razor at the outlets, and put a DVD on for the kids in the back seat. By the time they get home, they've been foreclosed on, and the repo man pays a visit. Then, if the cycle holds up, they buy a jumbo-size plasma screen TV on CREDIT.