Bail-ups?

In order to get out of these bad economic times we must spend more money that we do not have. Apparently this is a well accepted truth of our national economic policy. I do not doubt that it is true for the short term. Okay, maybe I doubt a little bit. But it's probably true.

I just wonder sometimes how things really are. Just thinking out loud now. I don't have any evidence for what I am about to say. Just wondering (or wandering).

For decades the American middle class, the workers, has taken hits. While corporate management and investors have lived in a golden era of obscene salaries and profit, workers have lost benefits and real wages. This has not just happened in the past few months as the economy declined. This happened during the economic boom. The industrial labor force diminished in numbers and power as our economy shifted from industrial to service based. Unions lost power. A power, that to a great extent, has not been replaced in the middle class that works in non-industrial jobs. A portion of corporate profits were nothing more than gains made from worker benefits no longer paid.

Now, in order to save business, which has been so benevolent, middle class America is told to spend. Get under the sofa cushions and find spare change and get out there and buy, buy, buy. Max out those cards. Don't save. That would be unpatriotic.

So maybe, after the consumer militia has waged a heroic war, shopping without regard for life or limb, our way of life will be saved through spending cash. Long live the green.

At the end of it all, middle class workers will have heroically propped up those businesses that have screwed them for more than a decade. Salvation through consumer spending or government bailouts, on the tab of the middle class.

And the middle class worker will have a job. No guarantees of any lost benefits or protection against wage reductions. And a tax bill that will keep coming for decades.

If the present economic stimulus bill passes as proposed, the price tag will be close to a trillion dollars. Add that to what we have already bailed out, and you're closing in on two trillion dollars.

That would be about six or seven thousand dollars for every man, woman and child in the USA.

Why do bailouts have to start at the top?

Because they wouldn't work by starting at the bottom with the workers? Yeah, it's been working so good the other way.

When this bailout thing first started last fall, I joked about just giving the taxpayers the money and let them spend. Now I'm not sure it's so funny.

The workers have been trickled on long enough. The guys at the top have proven what they can do. Maybe we should just hand out the bailout checks directly to the people. Let them decide who is worthy of a bailout.

Maybe it's time for the last to be first. Sounds crazy doesn't it? What kind of fool would say something like that?

But everything is crazy. Amazon dot com is advertising an Obama Chia head for sale this morning. You know, a bust of Obama that, when you water it every day, grows grass hair.

So another means to save the economy. Go to Amazon and buy one. It's an act of patriotism.

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