COLUMN: Take at wack at the economy
What’s the economy done for you lately? Like gravity and the NFL tiebreaker formula, it is too big and all-encompassing to understand. The DOW and NASDAQ go up or down, but I never know why. I know about supply and demand; I studied Adam Smith’s invisible hand, and I refinanced my house three times, signing way too many unread thick documents each time. I’m sure I will be haunted by these documents when Zion’s Bank invokes its live organ donor clause.
Not so long ago and not at all far away there was a thing called “consumerism.” It was led by a now marginal presidential candidate named Ralph Nader. Consumerism was so cool that Nader once appeared on Saturday Night Live. Many young impressionable people not unlike myself wanted to be like Ralph in much the same way 21st century kids want to be like Mike, LaBron or whoever the current hot shoe endorsement guy is. How much have things changed? Ralph Nader going into politics is sort of like Albert Einstein abandoning theoretical physics for pro wrestling.
Let me talk retro for you. Way back then, in those wild days of consumerism, Barbara Walters and Geraldo Rivera used to actually be journalists and “60 Minutes” drew higher ratings than “Friends.” So what happened? Did businesses suddenly become altruistic and honest or did we just stop trying to figure it out? One word – Enron.
We have no idea how the economy works, and for the most part we don’t care. California didn’t like the way the economy was going so they fired the governor and elected an action hero. The president gave everybody $200 so they would all buy a DVD player and things would be OK. He also figured nobody would do the math and figure out that $87 billion in Iraqi home improvement would come to $340 for every man, woman and child in the United States.
Locally, Utah is doing its part to keep the economy wackier than a pi̱ata. Utah is currently leading the league in several important categories Рbankruptcy, home foreclosures and weird food supplement companies. Nobody knows for sure why Mormons, mountains and large bodies of salt water combine to make such a strange brew.
Now even NPR blandly drones the housing starts, the consumer confidence and durable goods numbers as if they really mean something. These terms have joined the likes of Dolby noise reduction and torsion bar suspension as things everybody has heard of, but nobody really knows what they mean. What about housing remodeling? What about a caring-about-consumers index? What about making goods so durable that you didn’t really need to buy more durable goods? What about savings? What about reduced national debt? What about three-day weekends, health care for everyone and cars that run on disposable diapers? What about Gladys Knight giving tips to the Mormon Tabernacle choir? Unrelated, I know, but just as incomprehensible and just as true.
Ralph, we need you back.