Skip to main content

Recession Guaranteed

      Our Congressional economic experts have finally agreed on a compromise that will enable them to raise the government's debt ceiling. That's good news, right?
      Well, yes and no. Yes, because the nation will be able to keep its promises to creditors, and no, because they have just guaranteed that the longest recession since WWII will continue.
     The agreement cuts government spending by more than $2 trillion over the next decade. The exact targets of the slashing ax are yet to be established, but supposedly all expenses are on the table.
     If Congress cannot agree on the exact items to be cut by the end of 2011, spending cuts of $1.2 trillion across much of the federal budget, including the Pentagon, domestic agency budgets and farm subsidies, will be triggered. Many federal benefits programs, however, would not be hit by this contingency, including Social Security, Medicaid, veterans' benefits, and federal retirement benefits.
     A reduction in Federal spending means that jobs are going to be cut; whether it will be Federal employees directly, or employees of Federal contractors and subcontractors, people are going to be thrown out of work.
     A portion of the savings is expected to be obtained by winding down the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Adding hundreds of thousands of service people to the domestic labor market, which is already losing tens of thousands of jobs each month because of the normal increase in population, will only compound the problem.
     Subsidies to the states will be cut, leading to more job losses. Highways and other Federal and State construction projects will be canceled. Given the makeup of the current Congress, the healthcare system will be a big casualty.
     However, if you are dependent upon the financial world for a living, your disruptions, if any, will be temporary and minimal. Read the series, “The recession is over for some people...” dated February 16 through March 18, 2011, in this blog to find out why.
******
     Although Category four is probably home to some non-ethnic jokes, I couldn’t find any. Because I promised an example for every category, I submit the following with my sincerest apologies:
     Distortion of Pronunciation – There Are Only Seven Jokes.


There Are Only Seven Jokes” and “The Spirit Runs Through It” are 

available in paperback, or at the Kindle Store.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

There Are Only Seven Jokes - Introduction

      The statement “There are only seven jokes – all the rest are variations,” has been around for a long time, but no one ever seems to know what the original seven are. I think I have found the solution to the mystery.       The answer is to be found in an article published in the New York Times on May 2, 1909. Entitled “New Jokes? There Are No New Jokes, There Is Only One Joke,” it goes on to say that all jokes are a distortion, and lists seven categories of distortion. Supposedly every joke will fit into one of the categories. I believe that repetition changed the seven categories into the seven jokes.       Each of my next seven blogs will be devoted to exploring one of the categories. In addition, I shall attempt to give an example or two of jokes which I think fit the category.       You must realize that this article appeared over one hundred years ago, so most of the jokes appearing therein are so out-of-date that modern readers wouldn’t even understand them. For example,

By Today’s Standards Many of my Teachers Would be in Jail

I started school in a two-room building: grades 1 to 4 in one room; grades 5 to 8 in the other. One teacher in each room taught all four grades. I don’t remember first grade very well – the teacher left at the end of the year. I am pretty sure it was not my fault. Now keep in mind that reading the Bible every morning was the standard for all grades at that time. But my teacher in grades two to four went a little above and beyond the normal practice. As a member of a “plain” sect, she considered it her duty to lead the little heathens to Christianity. She offered a free Bible to all students who managed to memorize 20 verses. I memorized my verses – “Jesus saves” was my favorite because it was the shortest – and got my Bible with my twenty underlined in red. That would be illegal today (not the underlining), and rightly so. Teachers may not teach religion, although contrary to what many folks seem to think, students may bring their Bibles to school, read them, and pray their
The National Anthem I have a somewhat minor pet peeve. I say minor because in the grand scheme of things neither I nor society will do anything substantive about it, so my best bet is probably to suck it up and move on. Perhaps after writing about it I can lay it to rest. It came up recently while I was working out at our Wellness Center. A program on television was playing America The Beautiful , and I remarked to a lady I have known for 40 years that I thought that should be the National Anthem instead of The Star Spangled Banner. She replied, rather huffily, I thought, “Some people think God Bless America should be the national anthem.” At that point I decided, wisely, I think, to back off before an argument sprang up. Now I realize that The Star Spangled Banner is a very nice, patriotic song, but an anthem it is not. According to Wikipedia, “ An anthem is a  musical composition  of celebration, usually used as a symbol for a distinct group, particularly the  nationa