Shrill Thrill

Dear J-

The recession is starting to affect us in ways we didn’t imagine; the scaly fingers keep extending and clutching at different things we do. Our day care is laying off the one lady that’s taken care of figgy since she first went — tomorrow is her last day. Beyond the obvious belt-tightening that we keep telling ourselves is counter-productive (odd how we’re encouraged to spend, not save, but cheap is the new chic, and unemployment keeps flirting with double-digits; hard to spend money you don’t have), we’ve watched the steady decline of the under-two set at day care; figgy “graduates” to the big kids this week, and at that point, with only one baby left, they couldn’t continue that program.

When we started, they needed three people to keep up with all the babies; now when I pick her up, it’s as though the nursery echoes with babies that should be there, now missing. Miss Rita’s got a decidedly soft spot for figgy; despite all the naughtiness, despite once biting her, she’s got a gift with the kids that makes figgy rush to her on mornings. Life goes on, I suppose — there’s nothing we can do about it, but I can’t feel like I’m whistling down the wind every time the recession shifts and kicks another support out from under us.

The timetable for economic recovery keeps getting longer, doesn’t it? Expectations get lowered, so that we might not never quite be as healthy as we were before. We spend to avoid going in deeper; the economy is so wickedly complex that no one knows which strings to pull, which tools will work, which path to take to lead us out. Thus we continue riding the waves after the thrill has passed, thus we wait with bated breath for the next tentacle to touch our lives.

Mike

Corporation Citizen

Dear J-

How is it that we can justify corporate welfare before individuals?  Bank bailouts, automaker handouts; how come we keep throwing steaks to sharks as punishment?  If we are a free-market system, and rewards belong to the victors, why should risks be shared as well?  After we set the dangerous precendent, we are left with those choices.  Big government intervention; we squeeze the consumer to benefit the corporations and wonder why we’re so reluctant to stimulate the economy.

Reading older novels is like going back in time; you marvel at the language and expressions that once made sense — the common vernacular of, say, Less than Zero might already be starting to show cracks — but more than that you gain a deeper appreciation of common human experiences.  All the deadly sins, as fresh today as a thousand years ago, even.  Someone once told me that when he reads, he can’t help but project the descriptions on the places he knows best.  Every time they describe a porch, then, I’m taken back to Cheney and the house’s front stoop, regardless of how vividly it’s described.  Same goes for characters, I think; I identify character traits with those I’ve seen in my life.

The idea of corporate welfare, then, is nothing new; the placid acceptance of it seems to be.  We choose to believe that if it’s not affecting us, then it certainly can’t be that effectual.  Do we let the companies collapse?  Will it be, as feared, a domino effect, rippling through all aspects of the economy and touching all places close to us?  What a choice we find:  do nothing and ensure failure, or do something and possibly stave it off.  Yet with savvy investors pulling out stakes in the automakers, how do we guarantee that we aren’t just throwing money away?  How can you mandate that corporate executives have the company’s interests, and not their own pocketbooks, closest to their heart?  When did greed overwhelm common sense?

Mike