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In this article Nation Ready To Be Lied To About Economy Again | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
The author in satire nails the real mindset of the American consumer. We can not fault the Government and the Multi-National Corporate entities for lying to us daily about the real condition of the economy because in fact, that is exactly what we want them to do. The truth is just too depressing, and we as a people do not have the intestinal fortitude to deal with it.
I love The Onion! And it is hard for the economy to compete with breaking headline news like "Shirtless Joe Biden Washes Trans Am in White House Driveway."
So harmony abounds: 98% of Americans don't want to know the truth about matters that directly affect their livelihood and their future, while the Top 2% controls America and the banks lie like rugs. LTGTR.
Oh absolutely. It is quite endemic of the american populace as a collective. Escapism has been for decades the flavor of choice of Americans. Without escapism American Idol, Hooters, the NBA, et al doesn't exist, period dot.
In my opinion it actually stems as a defense mechanism against having to confront the choices that are presented to you once your bubble bursts, no pun intended (yet how fitting). Optimism bias is heavily encroached in the human physique and Americans take the cake. Wiki it. It's like the anatomy of the american physique if you ask me.
Our threshold for pain, scarcity and shortchange is so low, and our optimism bias so high, that we're like a crackhead in need of an intervention. We cheer on our own keynesian-constructed economic destitution and we do it because it is relatively less painful in the short term than the real proactive alternative (the truth). We are further encouraged to believe in the wisdom of our cowardice due to optimism bias. Those who preach the truth are considered facetious cynics (the antithesis of the optimism biased) and dismissed while they predict the future. Peter Schiff comes to mind and they still negate his shack on the economy, even in 2009.
The current administration is no different than the previous one in that none have the political will or capital to actually mean what they say or tell the ugly truth for one. I wasn't quite sure if optimism bias was as widespread as I thought until I began watching people criticize the current administration over semantics. After that it hit me that the American society is off its rocker and that they much rather believe that the perception of content is of more consequence than content itself. Nobody gets elected into office by slapping the constituency into reality and for that reason they'll continue to feed the sheeple the much asked for kool-aid until we're all dead and all the oligarchs (the REAL constituents of the government) have, in predicted fashion, raided all the wealth and moved on to better things. I love my country for what it USED to stand for, I dislike it for what it presently is. I am tied to it by my family and the personal affiliations I've developed in my lifetime and for that reason simply leaving wouldn't solve the problem at a personal level. But make no mistake about it, I'm not optimism biased to believe that by just chugging along every day making no fuss about it, hoping the job doesn't go away while I work increasingly more hours than the previous generation for less pay, and watching my daily dose of microwaves during American idol, that it's all gonna "work itself out like it always does" while I click my heels and hope for double digit housing appreciation, cheap electronics and an at-will McJob under six digit student loan debt. Get out of town with that insanity! Because if you want to know the truth, if we're getting in the business of taking the blue pill over the red, I can think of places with better weather and hotter women (Brazil) or places with a better safety net (Europe) in which to lose my mind and accept my disenfranchisement.
I can certainly agree with what has been posted so far. But don't you think that what is going is on is also much too complicated for ANY OF US to understand? Even the best and the brightest can get all that facts right all the time. What good are all the ugly details of doom & gloom to the average citizen, really? I agree that things need to change, the American consumer needs to change! But do we need to give up all hope and let our country completely collapse as result? I certainly don't have all the answers, but exposing the nasty details isn't the answer either IMO.
The details are their to see but most don't understand them really. If they wanted to know it isn't hard to finhd out.lookig at the public reaction it seems a large per cent do actually know tho.Just because one article takes a doom and gloom view means nothing. There is always people who want to beleive that the sky is falling;those who panic;those that get the conclusion wrong based on same facts and those who like to stir the pot and try to panic people. The theree is the consprcay controls everyhting fols and you can go on and on. The truth isn't waht I or you think or what somw author says.
A long time ago I stopped, after a very short splurge, using credit cards for daily expenses. Now that that piece of financial insanity is passed and the cards paid off I can watch my salary buy less as the time goes on. For instance monthly grocery expenses have gone from about $300 per month in 2006 to nearly $400 last month. My salary has not increased to match. I watched my ERA drop 50% in a year. I have seen health care costs go out of sight. I closed my own business 20 years ago because I could not afford the premiums. When I started this job we could afford a western vacation and now we cannot. Hotel costs have gone from $40 per night to $80. Gasoline is back to $2 per gallon.
I have not panicked but I do resent the politicians that have let our economy go down the tubes for forty years and let the implied deal that workers wages will keep up with costs and a college education will be a good investment of your time and your family’s money. We have been a cash cow for the rich and we are running out of blood to support their addiction to our money. We should have increased marginal tax rates not lowered them. We should have retained balanced trade policy and not sold our industries down the Chinese drain.
I do not think our economy can recover without telling people the boom is over and credit is dead and they will have to live on what they are earning and what they have. Telling them will be tough. I cannot believe people are still using credit card at 30% interest.
Maybe we can recover but only through some severe restraint. We will have to restore a steeply increasing rate income tax, institute countervailing tariffs, regulate mortgage and credit card interest and hold the savings interest to a real 4 to 5%. Oh, yeah we must stop spending the money to defend the international financiers. We cannot afford to be the policeman of the world. We need to defend the United States not the Saudi Royal Family. The consumer economy will tank under this regime but the changes will lead to a savings, investment and production economy. The alternative is worse.
That is the sound of a deep resentment and a barely controlled rage.
Don't worry, the nearly eight billion we "lent" to Chrysler is now no longer repayable... by the way, we are about to lend them billions more... so much for protecting taxpayers... thanks Bush and Obama! Could you please take more of my money... since the economy is "improving"... I can stand to lose a few more thousands...
For a farce, The Onion often hits the nail on the head...kind of like Scott Adams thinks up the worst things that could ever happen in a work setting and either I have, or some one I know, has seen it in action. Which really terrifies me when he tries to think of even worse things.
As long as you don't follow the herd of sheep from one trend to the next, you can see it's all just another cycle in life...and rise above it.
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