Will Your Family Survive the Recession?

As a nation we have started a downward spiral, and there is really no
light at the end of the tunnel The number of unemployed Americans
is climbing, and the dream of getting back on their feet is a distant one.
A story from FOX news on February 20th, 2010 entitled
"Getting Back Lost Jobs Could Take 5-Plus Years" gives us a formidable
message.

"So many jobs have been lost that the U.S. must run hard just to keep from
losing more ground. Despite the election-year emphasis on job creation by both
parties, the short-term outlook is bleak.

While many economists believe the recession is technically over, nearly 15
million Americans remain unemployed. Six million of them have been out of work
for more than half a year.

President Barack Obama is asking for almost $300 billion more for recession
relief and job formation. The House last December passed a $154 billion spending
bill focused on jobs. The Senate is due to debate a far more modest version on
Monday, but appears bogged down in partisan bickering.

With or without new legislation, reducing a jobless rate that's now just under
10 percent to prerecessionary rates of about half that won't happen soon,
especially as government efforts to prop up the economy begin to wind down.

It could take up to five years or more just to get back to even."

(See http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/20/getting-lost-jobs-plus-years/
for more info.)

Here are some of the reasons I think that it is going to take even longer than
the government believes it will to step back onto solid ground as a nation, if we ever
do at all.

The biggest problem is that the sole focus of our governments actions has
been and is to cover the wound without cleaning it. Unfortunately the article is right about
the problem; all the government bailout programs have been doing is propping up our
economy to try and delay the inevitable in hopes that it would soften the blow.

As I see it, what they are doing is re-coiling the fist that
already knocked the wind out of a large portion of our country. With the housing incentives
that have been dragged out, a lot of hard working people who could be
out of work any second have bought homes they would have thought twice about if there wasn't a huge incentive
to. Of course, the object of their legislature was to stimulate the economy back to
its feet by messing with the uneasy real estate market - what I think has resulted is what happens when anything is unnaturally stimulated
- it crashes. It may be making people think things are improving, but like you have probably heard,
the bigger they are, the harder they fall. As soon as the caffeine "kick"
wears off, I'm afraid we will be worse off than we thought.

Not only are the jobs that remain becoming available to new people
less frequently because the hard working people ready for retirement are clinging to them longer because they can no longer survive on
what they have saved but most newly created jobs are not equivalent
to the many we have lost. The jobs are gone for good - they are
either in India to stay, or they have become obsolete through the advances in
technology that are bound to overtake even more jobs.


What I feel should be the governments focus is not how to prolong the suffering by trying to minimize peoples losses, but we should let the recession run its course. There is no faster way to bring it to an end than to stare it in the face and deal with it head on. Like pulling a tooth, or a sliver out of your skin, the anticipation is much worse than the actual pain. People will survive - life will go on. Meanwhile, our focus and resources should be put towards educating the population of new ways to create wealth. The jobs that are gone are gone. We can either cry about it, or get over it and find a solution to the problem, but trying to "prop" the economy up is not going to solve any of them. It is only raising hopes that will inevitably come crashing back down. There are solutions out there, we just have to open our eyes and adjust to the new paradigm of thinking - one that includes such industries as the formerly despised one of network marketing.