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A sign of our economic times
Over the past few weeks as I have scrolled for articles to blog about, I’ve noticed a decided increase in articles on topics pertaining to our economic times. Here’s just a sampling:
- Feeling thrifty, the thirsty reach for tap, not bottle
- Feeling the pinch: Nevada’s brothels hit hard times
- Thrift stores see increase in sales
- Solution, or Mess? A Milk Jug for a Green Earth
- Teens learning joys of thrift
- Economy Affects Fourth of July Traditions
While a tight economy has its downsides, these articles highlight some good things that are happening as a result–namely, that people and companies are thinking more “green” in order to save money, and Americans are becoming less consumerism driven as they realize they don’t “need” as much as they thought they did. What other positive trends do you see emerging from our strained economy?
Topic: Newsworthy, WorldMagBlog
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back to top31 Comments to “A sign of our economic times”
Stories are heating up everywhere on a cold topic–the average and rather subtle adaptions in our generally healthy free economy.
The real hot story is being almost completely ignored. There are 90% fewer stories on the Iraq War (which is succeeding due to our persistent resolve and focus on our mission) than one year ago.
One report stated that a year ago, 27 % of all news stories were about the war. Today, it is down to 3%.
We must be winning and the defeatist Democrat media are miffed. The mainstream media is simply a campaign organ for the Democrat Patry.
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A major factor putting a strain on our economy is greed–NOT capitalist greed in a free market but government greed as they keep taking bigger and bigger portions of every gallon of gas we buy and litigation greed as lawyers continue to cripple honest businesses who must then pass on legal costs to their customers.
More and more money is going to people and institutions that DON’T work for it.
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People are actually thinking twice about their behavior–whether it’s how much to drive or if they can afford to do something. I think that’s a positive change.
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Postive changes?
600 Starbucks stores are closing…
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Hey, what Michelle said!
Around here, potluck, cards and board games are making a comeback. And having Lost Parties or NCIS parties, whatever a fave TV show is. This is kicking it old school, but going out to eat is an extravagance as are going to the movies. This is all the rage among the twenty year-olds.
It helps that I live in a tourist destination, but a lot of locals are saying they are being tourists in their hometown this summer.
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Hey, if the brothels in Nevada are losing business, that is good. Of course, I wonder how much of that is the bad publicity it brings the johns when they are found out!
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What other positive trends do you see emerging from our strained economy?
Now that the cheapest gasoline costs more than the cheapest beer…..I think that Americans will worry less and be happier if they drink more and drive less.
As a perfect example of this…
Did you see where Prince Charles has converted his (way over) 30 year old Aston Martin, given to him by his mother the queen on his 21th birthday, to run on cheap British wine that no one wants to buy. He invented the first Wine-O-Mobile that only uses 4 bottles per mile. Sadly, the car is only uses 1,200 bottles per year but it is the thought that counts.
Now, if he was really clever, he would scrap the Austin Martin, recycle it into a decent pot still, take the cheap British wine and make some decent distilled hooch out of it to drink, It probably wouldn’t reduce his carbon footprint to fake himself into feeling better but he could really could succeed at feeling better after a couple of shots instead.
If he outlives his mother, he will make a fine King no doubt
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Joel (#’s 1 & 2),
I’d say you’re on the Mark!
What! Don’t tell me you’ve heard that one before?
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I’m hoping that higher gas prices force the gov’t to give Amtrak enough funding to increase routes and frequencies.
Train travel is much more efficient than air travel or automobile. And it’s more relaxing and comfortable.
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JM: Whatever happened to that fellow Osama Whatshisname? You know, the one who killed a few thousand Americans? Oh that’s right, your Fearless Leader called him irrelevant some time ago. But it seems he’s been holed up on Afghan border and while we’ve been busy making Iraq safe for Exxon, he’s been knocking off ever more of our undermanned troops.
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As for the substance of the post, I think the full consequences of the catastrophic decline of the dollar, the housing/credit collapse and the oil price debacle have not yet been appreciated.
America is well on its way to becoming a second class country, albeit one with a whole lot of nukes. The American Dream of a big house with a white picket fence in the ‘burbs and two urban warfare vehicles in the garage is shot, at least for the next decade. The climate changes that are going to wreak havoc with our agricultural system are minimized or ignored by our leadership.
“Green” housing and cars, public transportation, etc certainly do not make our lives any better than they were; they simply enable us at best to persevere and maintain. In the long run, they might have given us a competitive advantage, but much of the rest of the world is already far ahead of us in most of these areas. In addition, our spread-out population makes us much more dependent on transportation energy than just about any other developed western country.
Massive infrastructure improvements, massive educational investments, re-assertion of worker’s rights to living wages, and requiring the most fortunate among us to pay for most of the above are the only chance for Americans to have any chance of increased standards of living in this coming century.
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Arcadia, I’d have to disagree with the last paragraph of post 11. Your solutions will drive money out of the country altogether! The “rich” don’t have to live here, and won’t invest here unless there’s a benefit to do so. The more our gov’t micromanages the economy, the more problems due to unintended consequences we’ll have. The free market will do more good than gov’t control in the form of higher taxes and minimum wages can.
And as for the massive educational investment, what do you think we’ve been doing?!! The more we “invest”, the worse the results get. In any other industry, the bosses would have been fired, but instead, teachers’ unions just seem to get more clout and more money. What a shame!
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As far as benefits go, we’re certainly having more game nights as a family!
Friends also seem to be more intentional about passing around hand-me-downs before even donating to the thrift stores.
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re #10 – Big bad straw-man Arcadia. Why not inform the rest of us how Osama is actually relevant passing his time making crappy quality videos filled with empty oaths to please Islamo-facists and liberals alike. Hmmm?
One positive is that I’ve heard of people dropping cable TV programming. Nice way to go folks! Discovering the value of family has much merit. Hard to do when the kids/parents are glued to the idiot box.
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I liked the article about thrifty teens…..I thought the whole “I spent less than you” contest was just me and my best friend!
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re #11 – America spends more per capita on education than any other country, period. The test scores indicate that America ranks in the lower part of the top 25 nations in overall performance among high school upperclassmen. Communist countries have better schools than we do…but that’s your point, isn’t it Arcadia? Socialize the country, and all will be better? Show me where it’s worked before, please. If you want to fork over your money to those who didn’t do the work to earn your money – be my guest; it’s called “charity” and we will do well to leave the gov’t out of it, thank you.
A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. We haven’t seen that in over six years. If the gov’t would make tax cuts permanent and cap gov’t growth – we wouldn’t need stimulus packages and tax “holidays”. Keep the gov’t out of the free market and let the law of supply and demand dictate the price of corn and oil – not gov’t meddling and subsidies.
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I’ve been won over by the new milk jug design. Even after rationing milk out to the kids, we still buy 4-5 gallons a week. The new design lowered the price so much that I’m getting 4 gallons for what I used to pay for 3. Free market success story!
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MICKEL – “One positive is that I’ve heard of people dropping cable TV programming.”
Bite your tongue, old bean! Drop your cable and I lose my job.
ADIOS – “having Lost Parties or NCIS parties, whatever a fave TV show is.”
Ahhh, the voice of reason. More cable everyone – Momma Birkenstock needs a new pair of shoes.
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#12 MOMOF5,
Don’t stop by telling Arcadia the ideas exposed in the last paragraph of his post is nothing but bunk failed socialism at its finest and that America was based on Capitalism not Socialism for good reason.
Now, like any good mother would tell a wayward Arcadia tell’em “oh woe is me, what have I done to deserve such pain and misery?” and remind him or her that all of the ills he whines about happened while his Socialsits have been in power – even them not getting Ossama like they promised they would.
Remind him or her that unemployment is now 5.5% not 4.5% when they took over. Gas was less than $2.5o a gallon, there was no credit crisis, no housing slump, no recession looming and the dollar was worth 30% more than today. The American dream was still intact for all Americans before Socialism came back from the grave. There was no agricultural inflation in pricing. There was no stock market crash. Remind him that all of these things have taken place at the mear thought of socialists taking the presidentcy when there would be no curbs possible on their insane econmoic and social insane ideas that were long ago tossed in the trash bin of history becausee they just plain killed everyone who got near them.
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Correlation does not equal causation, Llama.
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LLama, #19,
All good points.
I’ve frankly got my hands full with my 5, though…don’t think I’m going to be able to reform Arcadia. But my 5 future voters will be able to out-vote him one day. (I haven’t handed them over to the teachers’ unions for PC indoctrination.)
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Llama makes a good point about agricultural inflation. While the price of ag products has increased drastically – the wallets of producers aren’t getting padded. In fact – producers are in a position of more risk at $6 corn than they were at $2 corn. Given that input costs have soared, if the corn were to drop sharply, or the yields from this year prove to be poor (with the streak of storms in the grainbelt – that’s possible), producers would take a hard hit.
Fuel, food, taxes. It’s all gone up since 2006. Now, what happened in 2006??? Oh yeah, minimum wage got increased!
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#19: Proving that Llamas are unmatched at producing excrement.
In fact, no “Socialists” are in power. Democrats have a scant majority in Congress — not enough to break a filibuster or override a veto — and the rightists still control the White House, for another few months.
The housing market crashed because George W. Bushs’s “ownership society” led to lenders lending money to people who had no business borrowing it. The other factors are less directly traceable to a single cause, but Democrats are certainly not to blame for any of them.
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“What other positive trends do you see emerging from our strained economy?”
Fewer people will vote for the Republican in the next election. That’s a huge plus.
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#29 STEVEG
Here in CA with only enough Republicans in elected office to uphold a veto by the Governator, we have flouted state law that says that each year’s budget must be balanced, we have, in fact, not had a balanced budget since before Arnold was elected.
The single biggest growth in our state budget is covering more children with state supported medical care. Is this not “socialized medicine?” Who votes for “socialized medicine” if not socialists?
Are you really saying that there is a difference between a Democrat and a socialist? If so, please tell us what those differences are? I am unaware of them.
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re #23 …”The housing market crashed because George W. Bushs’s “ownership society” led to lenders lending money to people who had no business borrowing it. The other factors are less directly traceable to a single cause, but Democrats are certainly not to blame for any of them.”…
Something about … excrement? Do you actually believe that lenders lending money to people who had no business borrowing it was instituted by W? Dude – I’ve got this $25 genuine Romex watch I’d love to sell you…just don’t wear it in the pool, or it’ll turn green.
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Do you actually believe that lenders lending money to people who had no business borrowing it was instituted by W?
Directly? No.
But encouraged? Enabled? Oh yes. I certainly do.
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re #27 – from the article …”This idea (credit being lent to everyone) was pushed to the extreme where by some estimates, homeowners in California used home equity lines to finance automobile purchases.”…
Looks like the responsibility on THAT one would be on the borrowers. Not the gov’t and not the lending institutions. Why? Because equity is allowable in considering credit and wealth. Old fasioned materialism is to blame on that one.
Case in point – the next paragraph says…”Auto lenders and banks, closing their wallets, have prevented hundreds of thousands of consumers from obtaining the financing for a car. Home equity loans, which had been used in at least one of every nine deals, when lenders were more generous, are no longer a source of easy money for many prospective buyers.”…
So the lenders got smarter and began refusing loans based on what would essentially be an unrealized gain.
How did W encourage frivilous buying, again?
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re: #11
Arcadia,
You say, “reassertion of worker’s rights to living wages”.
Cool. Can I move my family into your house with you and I’ll wash your dishes for you, which you probably don’t want to do anyway, for which besides room and board you’ll pay me a living wage and full medical and retirement benefits?
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Oh, yeah, I forgot to add that because I wouldn’t have to commute, and we homeschool, I’m sure you could get some sweet carbon offsets as part of the deal.
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Mickel: As I said, Bush was not directly responsible. But he did challenge lenders to do all they could to increase home ownership, especially among minorities. This DID include some federal programs and funding designed specifically to accomplish those goals.
If you’re going to deny that St. George could ever be wrong, then you will refuse to acknowledge this. But facts are facts and the links I’m providing show them in plain language.
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