Economy Stuffs 12/24/2008
 

Ok so I wrote to a talk show host that I usually listen to when I'm not living at school.  I know its kinda weird that some 17 year old kid has these thoughts but I still have them!

Here I go:

 I'm a 17 year old female Hawaii senior and been listening to your show nonstop for about a year and about four months on and off because of where I currently am.

First off, with all this talk about the different bailouts that President Bush is signing, why can't he just let some of the banks, stock markets, car companies, etc. go bankrupt so that taxpayers like you or my parents and future payers like myself don't have a burden of possible debt in our future?

Secondly, why are we spending money on helping other countries instead of using that money to help ourselves?  It doesn't seem right that we're trying to help others when we can barely survive ourselves with the crisis we're considered to be in.

Lastly, I've also heard that we're considered to be close to a severe depression.  If that were true, wouldn't the average unemployment rate of the entire United States be getting higher at an extremly rapid rate?  I know that here in Hawaii the unemplyment rate is 4.9% and that isn't changing much.  If it were a close depression, wouldn't EVERYBODY across the board be suffering really bad?

I'm just a bit hazy on the facts and I was wondering if you can clear some things up for me.

Thank you,

Jordan

 

If anyone wants through their opinions, I'm totally willing to discuss anything.

Merry Christmas!  May you enjoy every moment with your family!

 


Comments

OuyangDan

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 21:20:38

Well...you asked...

As much as I hated the Wallstreet Bail out, if the banks go bankrupt than our economy will tank. End of story. I think there should have been a ton more strings attached to the money we loaned them as tax payers, and the upper echelon of CEOs and such should have been forced to not receive their bonuses and make major personal cutbacks...but this did not happen.

The car companies can't be allowed to go under b/c of the level of jobs that would be lost. The number of jobs in Detroit alone in the auto industry would be catastrophic for the people and their families there. These jobs aren't help by rich white dudes who will be OK, they are overwhelmingly held by minorities, many lower middle and lower class who depend on those jobs and the unions to keep food on their tables and insurance for their families. These areas are already stricken by poverty heavily, and class plays heavily in these areas also. The same areas that would be devastated by the auto companies failing already are hurting by a lack of accessibility to things you and I are privileged to have readily available, like a grocery story w/ decent produce in a reasonable distance from our homes. Out side of Detroit several states, like Missouri, have assembly plants w/ similar situations. A devastating loss to the auto companies would devastate already marginalized groups such as struggling minority women and other single parent homes.

The unemployment rate rose about <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm">1.5 percent in November</a>, which doesn't seem like a lot, at <a href="http://www.miseryindex.us/urbymonth.asp">6.5% nationally, compared to 3.9% at the end of the Clinton administration</a>. It has steadily increased over the last eight years.

Employment has become increasingly difficult to obtain, even in the service industry. It took my mother four months to find a job, then after two months she was laid off due to the recession, the one that every Progressive alive knew started in Dec. 2007, but was only just announced last month.

Hawai'i's stats are skewed, in that unemployment numbers tend to not include farming numbers, and a significant number of farms were devastated by the Vog this year, giving cause for Hawai'i to be declared a disaster area.

Just some stuff to chew over. I am no economist, but if you poke around a few of the places I read regularly you can get a better idea of why things like the bailouts* were necessary evils, and why we are in fact in a near Depression.

*The Wallstreet bailout should have included a caveat like the one they are demanding of the auto company, where the government will profit directly from the investment, w/ part of the profits going back to the tax payer in some way. The worst part is that this bail out should have prioritized the home owner/borrower first in an attempt to keep people who never missed payments (a la Ho'ala schools) from being foreclosed even though they never in fact defaulted their loans. The banks kind of screwed people over, or tried to, like Bank of America tried to do in Chicago last week.

 

Jordan

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 13:04:24

Well that's a lot of information to chew over.

Again, I like to hear different opinions and my thoughts on everything is still very immature. I'll look into what I've questioned more deeply via economic blogs, newspapers, etc.

Thanks for your input!

 

OuyangDan

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 02:00:47

It is a lot of information, and kind of hastily tossed in here. Lol. Just wanted to give you another POV, ya know?

That you are questioning things means that you are maturing into your own thought process on these things...and that isn't immature at all.

Like I said...I don't believe we are as different as you might think, even if I am a crazy liberal. ;)

 

OuyangDan

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:12:43

I thought of you when I saw this (Sociological Images is a pretty awesome site), since I remembered we had discussed unemployment briefly, and wanted to give you another resource, in case you were still curious.

(since your site doesn't support links in comments it seems)

http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/03/04/unemployment-rates-by-county/

I don't think we talked about "unemployment" vs "underemployment" which is just as traumatic to some families where one person is working in an underpaying or short hour job just to make <i>some</i> money, and w/ no benefits.

 



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