Practicing for the Next Depression

With economists talking about the current economic client as the most dangerous since the Great Depression, it’s time to start practicing the skills we will need in case things really go down the tubes. Or perhaps we should say, down the subprime lending institution.

Today’s generation doesn’t have the skills to face a major economic showdown. Heck, they have trouble thinking that sales of the iPod might slack or that there was life before dial up. There’s no way that those under 30, perhaps even those under 55, can understand the realities of the late 1920s and the 1930s. The only possibility of preparing these younger generations for a severe downturn is a rigorous application of traditional educational principles. Therefore, I am proud to introduce “Depression 101,” with both classroom and laboratory sections.

The following outlines the basic curriculum:

Apple Selling. The proper techniques for hawking apples on street corners, including dressing, pricing and the varieties with the best flavor and longest shelf life in each metropolitan area.

Creative Use of Stock Certificates. These pieces of paper do have intrinsic value. They can be used to start a fire for making mulligatawny soup. The more creative will pass the time learning macramé. (A mandatory self-defense course is offered for those signing up for this option.

Hobo Etiquette. It’s easier to beg when you know which household is a good mark and which will slam doors and windows on fingers. Learn how to read and leave signs for others from your new itinerant life.

Public Works Enrollment. Be the first in line when the new job camps enlist. It’s been a long time since you were in camp and slept in a bunkhouse. Learn how to avoid mess hall indigestion and meningitis. Practice looking busy without performing too much physical labor.

Riding the Rails. Passenger traffic may be endangered, but there is still an adequate supply of freight cars to many cities. Skills studied include dodging the bulls and distraction for dogs.

Windows 2008: No, this is not about the latest Microsoft operating system. In this section, students with a financial career will locate the best Wall Street windows for leaping. A modicum of physics is involved to study angles necessary in order to avoid crashing into a ledge one story below and actually hit the street.

It may take most people some time to pass this course. Therefore, the outline of “Depression 102,” will not be available until next year.

A Message from the National Knife Association

Few rights are more precious than the right to carry knives. From the beginning of the Republic until today, nothing has served to keep our defense of freedom sharp, than having a sharp blade on hand.

It has only been in the last few years that we have been able to get our message through to our leaders—that the right to be arms extends beyond guns. And that message is being heard from sea to shining sea as we march forward, blades held high.

Where would America be if Daniel Boone couldn’t skin a bear? Or there were no Bowie knife at the Alamo? After all, after you kill a deer, you still have to gut the thing. You can’t do that with a rifle or shotgun.

Knife fighting breeds character. Anyone can take a shot at a person or an animal 100 feet away with a rifle or handgun. It takes real character and courage for an up-close-and-personal fight with a jackknife or a stiletto.

How many gun carriers are as dashing as “Mack the Knife” or “Zorro, the Guy Blade”? (Knives and swords are cousins, separated largely by length.)

There’s no prouder moment than when a parent gives a child that first blade. Learning to safely handle a knife is one of those rites of passage—and it takes discipline to keep a knife sharp and to keep it in safe place in the home.

Think about how much safer the country would be if people were allowed to carry concealed knives. And there’s no danger a knife will go off by accident on a crowded subway that a stray stroke can kill or wound someone two car lengths away. Would 9/11 have happened if two or three people on one of those airplanes had been packing a shiv?

No, knives are the front line of the defense of freedom. Carrying them is part of our sacred birthright.

Remember: When knives are outlawed, only outlaws with have knives!

The Starbucks Recession

As it turned out, an economic downturn was the thing that proved most effective in ending illegal immigration as Hispanics by the thousands fled to jobs south of the Rio Grande, jobs in the factories enabled by NAFTA.

Rather than trying to stop them from heading south across the Rio Grande River, the border patrol was given the duty of handing out discount booklets with offers on housing, food and clothing. Soon, Republicans and Democrats were clamoring for a new “bracero” program to bring workers back and prop up the American manufacturing, farm, restaurant and domestic help industries.

Small towns every erected signs announcing they were “Mexican friendly” and ramped up Spanish language classes in public schools and adult schools. A nationwide program, whose slogan was “Amigos del Norte, Amigos del Sur, Amigos Siempres,” showed up in signs in fast food chains and supermarkets everywhere.

When gasoline hit six dollars a gallon, drive-through facilities became a thing of the past and highways were littered with SUVs, abandoned by drivers who didn’t have enough cash to buy another tank of fuel. Several interstate highways had median strips parceled out for gardens for town and city dwellers.

Then, the mandate for all residents to switch to HDTV was postponed when surveys showed a significant portion of the population would stick with VCRS and DVDs rather than shell out for a new television.

It became a shock to a generation of young Americans, baffled by the inability to buy the next generation of iPods, cell phones, computers and new jeans. They lined up plaintively outside of shuttered Apple stores and cell phone kiosks in malls nationwide. blank looks strewn across their faces.

Wal-Mart cut prices and cut prices, and cut employee wages even more. Somebody suggested replacing the enormous bronze bull in New York’s Wall Street district with a bronze statue of a flattened armadillo lying over a yellow stripe.

Perhaps the greatest indignity was the purchase of Starbucks remaining assets by the McDonald Corp. After all, who could afford to pay $5.05 for a venti cup of mocha or latte. There was at least some hope of being able to scrape together coins for the new McMocha and McLatte and the golden arches.

And thus, it became clear that things would just never be the same.

The Electronic Small Town

“Over the river and through the woods to grandfather’s house we go.”

Yes, despite the fact that most people substitute grandmother for the elder of the original poem, there’s still a bucolic setting to the image of our ancestors, whether it’s a return to the parents or grandparents’ abode.

Look at the television ads and the number of times the person returning from the army, buying a new truck or coming home for the holidays ends up at a farm. Considering that 2 percent of the American population lives on a farm, it’s a less and less likely scenario with each passing year.

For many baby boomers, the image holds. Their parents or grandparents were often farmers. But for the generations that follows, this image is more and more a “Founding Myth,” representing cherished values than a vision of modern American life.

It’s more likely “Over the turnpike and through the toll booth, to grandfather’s retirement condo we go.”

Will succeeding generations adopt suburbia as their myth? Will there be nostalgic pictures of grandma and granddad in their Cape Cod? Instead of pictures of dad hard at work in the barn yard, will we see him on his riding mower? To some extent, we do see him hard at work over the backyard grill.

And grandma, instead of lovingly delivering that home-cooked meal, calls out “There’s some frozen dinners in the freezer. Careful, the microwave door is tricky,” as she heads off to the senior citizen center.”?

Why 1984 Didn't Happen.

The assignment was simple--discuss George Orwell's penetrating novel "1984."

It was an assignment I told my 16-year-old daughter that reminded me that I had the same task when 1984 was a long distance in the future, and seemed likely to happen. But the year came and went, and Orwell's vision was not the one we have lived in since the target year.
Why didn't Orwell's world of three superpowers in ever-changing alliances, of carefully controlled language and the ability to rewrite the past at will come about, no matter how inevitable those developments may have once seemed?

Two unforeseen trends derailed that movement--The development of individual control over data and religious and national ferment.

Orwell's world relied on controlled data and the mainframe centered world that existed before 1984 was ideal for creating the belief we were headed towards a truly effective Big Brother. But as the pictures from the repression in Mynamar shows, controlling information has gotten tougher. The move toward democratization of data started with the PC and then continued with the development of the Internet and steamrolled along with hand-held voice and data devices.

The other development was the power of two older movements--religion and nationalism--to challenge the regime in the Soviet Union that was founded on economic theory--Communism.
The power of religion resonates with radical Islam in the Middle East and, in some sense, it simmers with those in the United States who would be happier with religion as part of day-to-day government. It is embodied in the fact that Israel exists and is opposed. It gave the worker's movement in Poland a base to challenge the Soviet system. It threatens to shake the generals in Myanmar.

The spread of nationalism has been part of the last 200 years, although it was seriously sidetracked by the Russian Revolution and the spread of Communism. But the fact that countries that have often not been independent, such as Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania once again exist and Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia split apart, and the arrival of so many new nations across the globe, is a tribute to the power of nationalism.

Big Brother may be watching. But he's not always in control.