The U.S. economy remains in a dismal state as arbitrary and mediocre statistics of improved unemployment rates and consumer confidence continue to be thrown around. How many of you truly have confidence that our economy is going to get better anytime soon, or that our government has the ability to fix it?
Sadly, if there is a recovery it will be a long time coming. I don’t understand where we got the idea in the first place that recovery from such a drastic fall would be quick or easy.
There isn’t an example in history where this type of recovery was easy, but my fear in this situation is that the government has squeezed its fat butt in the way so tightly that there isn’t any space through the doorway of recovery.
I don’t know if it was out of a hunger for control or just out of absolute panic that our government stepped right in the middle our economy. I will admit I am disappointed that we let that happen.
Somehow through this situation I think we stopped viewing this as our economy and not the government’s. We treated it like a used-car salesman and sold the piece of junk to the government so we wouldn’t have to deal with it.
I can’t think of one industry that the government doesn’t have its hands in, be it direct control or immense regulation.
But at what point does the current administration swallow its pride and admit that the stimulus idea didn’t work rather than trying it again? I’m remembering an old phrase, “There’s no point in beating a dead horse.”
When will we finally have the nerve to tell the government to get out of the way and give us a shot?
If you’re thinking that is a bad idea because big industry is a part of what got us into this mess, I’ll warn you that the government being in control is absolutely not the answer. Americans have always been decent at learning lessons from bad situations, and this is an unfortunate but needed wake-up call.
One thing that needs to stop is this growing resentment for large industry and the upper class. Yes, there will always be some corruption there, but let’s not paint everyone with a broad brush. There are good people in big industry.
Would it make us feel better to see those people come crashing down with the rest of the economy? Don’t forget at a time like this that they are the people keeping the economy afloat, not to mention that they are the people a lot of us could end up working for.
America thrives when we are industrializing and creating, and that only gets harder when the government is involved. Government has never been what makes our country successful, and it has never had the ability to “fix” an economy because it wasn’t set up to serve that function.
This won’t be a quick recovery, but if we get our thought process right and accept that this is our economy not the government’s, I believe we can do it. We have to try something else because whatever is going on right now sure isn’t stimulating my consumer confidence.
Conlan Simons • Sep 30, 2011 at 7:01 pm
Too much government? IT was too little regulation in the in the mortgage industry that led to this mess in the first place, but I wouldn’t expect someone with as much conservative bias as yourself understand that. Also thanks for listening the reasons why the stimulus was a failure. Backless claims are always the best way to write an article. If you think limited government is the best way to get out of a depression go talk to Herbet Hoover. He cut government spending, as republicans currently want to, and he ended up getting voted right out of office to be replaced by FDR who was willing to push the New Deal and help bring the country out of Depression. Of course WWII also helped, but again that was more government spending that brought the country back to what it was.
joshua4234 • Sep 30, 2011 at 12:30 am
“I can’t think of one industry that the government doesn’t have its hands in, be it direct control or immense regulation.”
-How about the financial industry and banking. Or I suppose one should say any hand the government has in it are hands paid for by them to do things they want. The right answer would be better regulation and better public officials, not zero regulation. Reaching that goal is just as hard as getting good regulation at this point.
“One thing that needs to stop is this growing resentment for large industry and the upper class. Yes, there will always be some corruption there, but let’s not paint everyone with a broad brush. There are good people in big industry.”
-I’m sure there are some nice people there, but the problem is with trends and averages. The upper classes wages and wealth has steadily been increasing for decades while the middle class has been stagnant. Taxes have been continuing to be cut for them. Large corporations dodge taxes. Large corporations have tactics where CEO wages go up and up, they get cheap labor overseas, they cut jobs to save money, etc etc. Obviously some are better than others. That doesn’t mean we just accept the one things are because some people are nice.
“Would it make us feel better to see those people come crashing down with the rest of the economy? Don’t forget at a time like this that they are the people keeping the economy afloat, not to mention that they are the people a lot of us could end up working for.”
-Lots of them are the ones responsible for the state of the economy, not keeping it alive. Many in the financial sector made millions from destroying banks. CEOs make millions lobbying to cut taxes and defund the government. They make millions sending jobs overseas and cutting jobs here. They make millions keeping money in offshore accounts, then bring it back in tax holidays for tiny percentages. They make millions taking money from the FED at tiny interest then basically loaning it back to the government for more interest. These things don’t help us.
We’ve come out of a similar situation before. I don’t see why we can’t learn from the past.