Falling Down

Falling Down

By David Glenn Cox
The Smirking Chimp
April 11, 2014

The media call this the Great Recession, like calling the
Titanic disaster a boating accident.

More appropriately, it should be called, The Second Great
Depression.

In a recession, the economy contracts for two or more fiscal
quarters and unemployment rises.

The effects of an economic Depression are similar, only more
extreme and prolonged.

A recession is like a head cold or the flu; but an economic
Depression is a cancer.

In a Depression, there is a disruption of credit or some other
banking crisis.

Due to high unemployment, there is also shortage of purchasing
power, which only makes the situation worse.

A recession is a cough; a Depression is choking to death on jaw
breaker, a systemic failure of the economy.

Hand wringing, prayer shawls or duct tape won’t do the trick,
something must be done, our economy has fallen and can’t get
up.

If you’re in your fifties, you probably remember learning about the
Great Depression from school or hearing, first-hand accounts about
it, from relatives.

If you were born in 1990, you probably have no recollection of
America at peace.

You have no recollection of the Cold War or when good jobs were
plentiful. No memory of big Christmases or that Uncle, who bought
a new Buick every two years.

“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would
have been if it had never shone.” ~ John Steinbeck

If you’re in your fifties and looking for a job, you know
what he’s talking about.

If you’re in your fifties you understand that difference.

We are the first digital generation and the last analog generation,
we remember available employment.

In 1977, I was looking for a job and buddy gave me a ride to apply
for one.

I filled out the one-page application and was hired on the spot, as I
was leaving the boss says, “Tell your friend he can have a job too,
if he can be here tomorrow at eight o’clock.”

Today its credit checks, drug tests, and “War & Peace”
job applications.

Jumping those hurdles gets you to the first interview, and then
they go talk about you among themselves for a while, before going
home to sleep on it.

If you passed that test, they call you back for a second interview;
the second interview is much like the first, only it’s the playoffs,
with much more riding on it.

The human resources department calls it, the hiring process,
I call it economic terrorism.

It isn’t you’re qualifications or abilities they question; it’s you as
a person!

They have something very rare and precious to share and they’re
not sure if you’re good enough.

If you’re in your fifties and looking for a job, you have decades of
experience.

In many cases, more than the person interviewing you and don’t
think they don’t know it. We are over-qualified in an under-
qualified job market.

Your years of experience have taught you the primary difference
between excrement and shoe polish.

But that’s unacceptable here at Tachametchi industries, a wholly
owned American subsidiary and a division of Szechwan Heavy
Industries Limited, LLC.

You think too much and that’s dangerous.

You remember when people who did a good job got raises; you
remember prosperity and might pass on that forbidden knowledge
to the young droids in sector seven, who’ve never heard of it.

You think outside the box, if Fed-X can’t pick it up today, then
call UPS, “No, you see, we have a contract with Fed X.”

Customer service is gone with the rotary dial; it’s policy
and procedure manuals now.

Article Seven, Chapter three: If the customer complains:
explain, “You’re very sorry, but it’s company policy.

Article Seven, Chapter four: If the customer complains:
about your attitude, (See Chapter three).

Can you begin to see now, just how radically dangerous we’ve
become?

Employment has moved from “I’m the boss and we all work here
together at the Acme Widget Company,” to “I’m the boss, shut up
and do as your told or else.”

There are only two options to escape from economic Depression,
either create more jobs or eliminate workers.

The second option seems to be the one chosen by the Obama
administration.

Since 2007, the suicide rate for Americans (45 to 65) has risen
dramatically, in 2010 to the highest rate among all categories.

A recession is where you lose your job and have a hard time finding
another.

A Depression is where you lose everything from a lifetime of work
and then kill yourself.

This isn’t debate about partisan politics or economic theories; it’s
a matter of life and death.

Extending long-term unemployment benefits will save lives and
families, pulling people back from the brink, instead pushing them
of over it.

This country needs a new public works project; and we need to
allow older worker’s the option of collecting full Social Security
benefits at 62 with partial benefits at 55.

Either way, it’s going to cost us, but until we deal with the crisis
of older workers, there will be no improvement.

Moving older workers out of the work force was the original
inspiration for Social Security, allowing seniors to retire with
a guaranteed income.

It was an attempt to free us from economic terrorism and a
way to give the next generation a chance to move up.

More than anything else a recession passes away, but a
Depression, defines a generation.

It changes how we think about prosperity, government and life.

It is a crisis, no less than Pearl Harbor or 9-11, leaving millions
living in a slow motion tragedy.

Millions of Americans living wounded hungry and cold, Americans
living in desperate straits, while Congress and the Administration
fail them, by looking away.

How we deal with this crisis will define us as a nation, the first
Great Depression ended in seven years, while we’re moving into
year six of the Second Great Depression, with no improvement in
sight.

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times
of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” ~ John F. Kennedy

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