Unemployment & Inflation

The ugliest American scandal of all is that the have-nots do not have a handle on what's really going on.

Part of personal growth is improving our understanding of things that affect us. With a better understanding we can reshape these beliefs and finally escape the associated fears. We've already fallen for shenanigans such as “weapons of mass destruction” and “too big to fail.” This time around we don't have to be fooled or frightened by how high the unemployment rate is or by the mention of inflation. Let's explore what those two things really mean.

Inflation starts occurring when the cost of things rise over time. What causes prices to increase? More money in our pockets does. The more money individuals/consumers have, the more things they demand. When demand exceeds supply, prices increase.

Unemployment reduces the disposable income of a population of individuals which reduces demand which in turn reduces inflation. In high unemployment economies, those who are employed, since they are now grateful to have a job, settle for less disposable income by agreeing to wage and benefit concessions and by not asking for raises while the costs of things around them continue to rise. More people spend less.

Not only does high consumer spending add to inflation but also high spending by the government. The government is already spending money on at least two wars and has been for years, now add to that stimulus spending upon stimulus spending upon stimulus spending.

Where did this stimulus money come from? They simply printed it as always. This adds to inflation. But inflation hasn't gotten worse as the government continues to spend more and more money for several reasons. Less spending by consumers due to unemployment, less spending by those who are employed due to uncertainty of how long their job will last and less spending by individuals and business because banks are not lending money.

The government helped reduce spending by individuals and businesses by allowing crucial economic areas such as banking and real estate to go unchecked, which caused the economy to become unstable and take several steps backwards. Adding to this was the continued behavior of Wall Street and insurers of financial products. Our government allowed enough unscrupulous behavior for businesses to fail in rapid, trickle down, domino succession then came to the rescue. This set the stage for rising unemployment and a nervous nation.

Let's jump to 2010. Government stimulus spending and war spending will remain in full force and effect which is why unemployment will remain high. Also, there will be fewer conflicting reports about the economic recovery. Once more individuals start believing what is already taking place, individual spending will increase and banks will lend more money. These two things will cause businesses to spend more. This is why unemployment must remain high. You can't have everyone doing better, at the same time everyone is believing, things are better. Why? Because they will spend more money which creates more demand for goods and services faster than they can be supplied which will increase prices and create inflation especially now since a lot of purchases have been delayed over the past two years.

The unemployed are the last ones to be reinvited to the party of consumption. In the meantime, the government appeases them with extension of benefits to keep them from becoming completely hopeless, desperate and dangerous which would create additional societal problems. At the same time, the government takes this opportunity to say we also need job creation measures and incentives so they can give businesses “too little to grow on their own” tax breaks, bailouts and handouts while most are left out. This is what happens to those “too asleep to suspect anything.” If we fail to understand what's really going we will always have to settle for a smidgen compared to the smörgåsbord others are invited to partake. On a related note, Congress has voted to not give seniors a cost of living increase in their social security but are considering giving them $250 next year. They must be “too old to need much.”

Finally, let's revisit the automatic, underlying thought we have when we hear the words, “high unemployment” or “rising unemployment.”

If we think those words mean there are no jobs, we are wrong. There are thousands upon thousands of advertised and open positions and more that are not. Jobs are not hard to find.

What's difficult is the lengthy hiring process that is antiquated, highly inefficient and filled with bottlenecks. Another reason unemployment remains high is many employers don't want to hire too quickly because they can temporarily get existing workers to pick up the slack while saving the cost of a new employee. The third part of the problem is employed people seeking jobs. It's their right but it slows down the timeframe for some unemployed people to become employed if the already employed person gets the job. This creates another open position and the process starts again. The last thing that makes the job outlook seem worse than it is, is that many job seekers are not willing to work anywhere doing anything for any pay which is their prerogative. It takes time for all these things to sort themselves out.

Now as the events in the economy continue to play out, we should be able to make better assessments since we know a little more about the script. We already knew who most of the players and actors were. It's up to us to decide if we want to continue to be used as extras or have a more significant role in the next episode of this delightful democratic drama.

Related Links:

Think Kuji! Think!

Quotes & Proverbs To Live By

Father May I Start Over In 2009?

As children, we used to play a game called “Father (Mother) May I.” The name changed depending on whether a boy or girl was in charge. The game consisted of at least three players: two or more “children” and one “father” We would take turns asking if we could take baby steps or giant steps to reach the place where the father was. It was up to that person to grant the request. If we failed to begin a request with “Father May I,” we would lose a turn; however if we did ask correctly, more times than not, the request would be granted. Sometimes we were granted fewer steps or additional steps. Anyone caught moving when they weren't supposed to or taking more steps than granted would have to start over.

Even at that age, I wondered why anyone would ask for baby steps when they could ask for giant steps. I also wondered why anyone would ask for one giant step when they could ask for any number. The only thing that made sense was taking steps without permission. We wanted to win and there could only be one winner. That's what it took under those odds and those stakes.

Thankfully life is not a game, although if we are not attentive, we could easily end up playing around, fooling around or messing around with our lives (been there, done that and ain't trying to go back). Our saving grace is realizing we have been moving out of turn with our true selves and feel the need to start over somewhere, some way, somehow. This is a good thing because it is always our turn. We can take the next step – baby step or giant step right now. We don't have to wait.

We don't have to wait for anyone else to get their steps granted first. We're not competing with anyone so the size and amount of steps and the time it takes are for each person to measure against their own standards. We don't have to ask for permission. We don't even have to wait until retirement. We do not have to wait for a new calendar year. Many who had to start over in the children's game did so immediately and many of those same children won the game.

What steps am I wiling to take when I'm trying to reach the place I should be? What steps am I willing to take when my life is at stake, when living is the prize and when my life is the main objective?

favorable odds

everyone can win
without giving in
for the meeting of ends
since dreams don't depend
on family, friends
or the adulation of men
it's wise to start over again
now is the time to begin

There are two months left in 2009 but only two motions, an inhale and exhale, until I can take a step to start over in some aspect of my life. My higher power granted me lifelong permission at birth and renews it every second of every day. How about yours?

Since I am now plenty old enough to have learned this, when I continue to hesitate, my Father says, "Please child, go ahead already!"

Related Links:

Personal Growth: It's Your Job

Listening For Understanding

I'm Not Holding My Breath

Loving Leaves

The rapid onset of deep Autumn was unsettling. Since then, tomato plants welcomed in from the cold are providing refreshing fruit and energy. As their leaves soak up the southern sun, firm green becomes supple red. The plants and I are adjusting.

Meanwhile, chilled leaves are one of the great pleasures of the season. Although I dread the spring onslaught of thousands of Maple seeds on freshly prepared garden beds, it is the Maple's current combinations of reds, golds, purples, lemon lime and fruit punch that are most delicious. The eye-watering colors shimmering to the breeze, the leafy rainbows sifting downward and the decorative accessorizing of the landscape, link the visual, the spiritual and the practical.

Leaves are adjusting to their critical roles as nutrient recyclers and as earth's organic, biodegradeable blanket. In this way, leaves add life to the largest living organism on earth, soil. Sadly, many leaves never make it home. Instead they are stuck to the hardscape, raked to the curb and either burned or carried away by the bagful and vacuum truckload. What a waste.

Contrary to popular belief, leaves scattered over lawns, flower beds and gardens insulate, feed and strengthen. Leaves covering the ground during winter are essential to the survival of many things. In turn, these microorganisms, insects and animals are essential to healthy lawns and human living environments.

No one rakes the forests, fields and clearings, yet these areas do pretty darn good without lawn care. All the luscious varieties of plant life in these unmanned natural environments, including grass, survive and return every single year.

Enjoy leaves on every level! On any windy Autumn day, try catching a falling leaf. It's much easier than catching a falling star and worth one wish just the same. The next time you look at leaves, love 'em and leave 'em.

Related Links:

Skeletal Existence Poem.

Nature: Friends Like Gardens

Poetry Is A Feeling

An Achievable Advantage

I've told my children to “think, use your head, learning to think is the best way to give yourself advantages in life and learning to think is one of the few things completely in their control.” Now it's time for me to do as I say and start taking advantage of what I already have – my brain.

According to estimates I don't even use 33% of my brain. If I doubled this, what could I do, create, solve, help, heal, avoid?

Whatever I'm doing right now, I'm doing the hard way. I'm making living harder than it has to be. I keep living against my own wisdom.

Whenever I ignore my own advice and do not take advantage of my most basic and precious resource, I might as well have been born yesterday and fallen off that turnip truck.

Running around everyday pursuing the things I do instead of first utilizing my brain to its fullest capacity is like chasing pennies rolling down the street while millions of dollars are undiscovered under my mattress. I cannot consider myself smart, open-minded, objective, adult, intelligent or educated until I learn to tap the potential of my brain and pursue this achievable advantage instead of chasing the type of “who I know” advantages from “you know who”(other penny chasers) that always seem to cost more than they're worth.

Watch this video*

*Shared by CRPS/RSD A Better Life. This blog is by a sufferer of chronic pain. It is resource rich with links, articles, encouragement, endurance, insight and a quest for solutions. Jeisea's journey keeps me mindful of one importance, living.

Nature: Friends Like Gardens

Autumn is not herself. She has allowed Winter to change her. She is surprisingly different.

She doesn't understand how much I need her to be the person who understands her role in the garden.

For now I focus on the harvest of a few friends like cabbage, broccoli, carrots and the soil. I am keenly focused on the fullness of homegrown grapes that will accumulate again especially if I contribute understanding and care again. This year the newborn vines gave what they could of themselves. Next year, they will bear the fruit they live for. It will be their first time. It will be their time nonetheless.

Consider the thoughts of Alice Walker from “In Search of our Mother's Gardens:”

“Please remember, especially in these times of group-think and right-on chorus, that no person is your friend (or kin) who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow and be perceived as fully blossomed as you were intended. Or who belittles in any fashion the gifts you labour so to bring into the world.”

Though I question Autumn, I mainly question myself. Are my friends like gardens or are they like Winter?

Spirituality: Completing The U-Turn

[continued from Life's Intersections & U-Turns]
“What the hell?” That crazy fool gon' tear sumthin' up! Gon' rearrange the front end offa one a dem cars!
But that sucka made it and kep' on trucking.
Made me wonder what else is possible.
Made me realize you can't make u-turns with the hammer down.

Polepole, is a Kiswahili word meaning, slow or slowly. It is pronounced (po-LAY-po-LAY)

Some of us are hardly guilty of polepole. We are guilty of traveling too fast.

We allow life with all of its required components to set the pace. We allow house work, yard work, errands, holidays, people, jobs, churches, organizations, obligations and many other things to keep our foot on the go pedal.

That leaves little to no polepole time to take in life and look at our map to make sure we're on course.

Still, all is not lost even if we've traveled hundreds of miles out the way ending up in East Bumbleton somewhere at the wrong end of a fork feeling stuck.

It's time to get off the expressway of expectation. Life is amazing but this ain't the Amazing Race. Rest stops are for resting. We need plenty of spiritual rest stops along the way for replenishing, reassessment and recommitment.

Anyone making a U-turn always has the right of way so don't worry about rearranging someone else's life. Even if it's the children's. Start slowing down...turn here. I've seen far crazier and scarier things work out just fine. It's possible. Polepole......polepole.........polepole...............You can make it. Come on. You got it! Now keep on trucking, sucka'.

Life's Intersections & U-Turns

Sometimes paths cross, sometimes they align.

From baby steps, to footsteps, to leaps and bounds, to stumbling and falling down, we are always forging paths of our own. Even though we might share the same household, community, school, workplace, organization and sports team, these periods of time amount to pauses when compared to all other time spent throughout lifetimes.

These pauses are similar to those we encounter at intersections. We are at the same place at the same time for those series of seconds, but then the light changes and we move on.

In life, those seconds our lives intersect can just as easily be months or years, but then life changes and we continue forging our path. Always at intersections some join and pursue similar paths while others leave. Sometimes we change. This is the whole point of intersections.

Perhaps we're meeting for the first time or once again. Which way are we headed now? Perhaps in this pausing we will share something for the next portion of our journeys.

I actually saw an 18-wheeler make a U-turn in a standard-sized intersection. The analogy is clear. No matter how big (old) we are, no matter how much weight (bad decision baggage) we carry, no matter how difficult (not the perfect time) it may seem, no matter how crazy it may look (others would advise against it), it's possible to make a U-turn on any portion of our path once we realize we need to change directions, in relationships, finances, jobs, health, habits, dream pursuit...

Another Dangerous Habit

Writing While Hungry

It is one week before autumn's calendar entry. She has already begun spritzing color and turning down temperatures.
The evenings are unusually silent. My sparrows have moved out. Their melodies missed. The robin family left much earlier after field days foraging in the backyard and literally outgrowing their space.
The grapes are peaking while the main garden is slowing. The August harvest explosion seems an understated event compared to the newly discovered smell of fresh peppers. It is the smell of molecules actively formulating flavor. The aroma yet another proof that this connection must never be broken. A pepper eaten by itself is a delight. The energy transforming.
The grapes are a bonus. The vine started from just a twig last year, bears mammoths compared to those from spring. Nature gives so much more than our efforts justify.
I cup the grapes gently like babies as I wash them. Spitting grape seeds at various angles is my kind of entertainment. There is no simpler pleasure other than skipping rocks in moving water, the soft sweetness of just pulled baby carrots and perhaps sausage cooked over a wood fire topped with some Sweet Baby Ray's, yellow peppers, tomatoes and cheese. I can already taste next summer.

Quotes & Proverbs To Live By

1. Fear and opportunity use the same window.
2. Feelings can only be hurt by your own thinking.
3. Winning is only possible when losing is possible.
4. Before children can achieve their own dreams, they must sleep in their own beds.
5. If artists starve, they don't do it alone.
6. The more time I use hiding things, the less time I use finding things.
7. Silence strengthens the status quo.
8. Money cannot change your standard of living.
9. Reinvent instead of lament.
10. Instead of looking for the light at the end of the tunnel, look for the light in the tunnel.
11. Losing can't exist in the same place as trying.
12. The only thing performed with 100% accuracy is waiting.

Parenting versus Overparenting

I was at my son's school for parent orientation. While some of the parents were in meetings, the children played outside. In front of the middle school is a narrow two-way street flanked by sidewalks. Leading up to the entrance is a thirty-foot, two-sided walkway, partially separated by a raised, but low, planting area. Some kids were standing in this yet to be planted, mulch covered area and sitting along its retaining wall. Several steps and a 10x20 foot landing area with railing are just outside the front doors.

Two children stayed on the landing. They appeared to be about eight and eleven years old. While the other fifty kids moved freely from the building to the landing to the steps to the walkway and to the sidewalk, those two children looked on longingly like puppies on a couch in the living room window.

The older child's friends asked her to come down the steps and join them and she said they couldn't. One friend replied, “Dang, your mama don't let y'all do nothing.”

It was kinda funny because I was thinking the same thing. It was sad because what those two children on lockdown felt and what the others with leeway recognized is something some parents don't. Children need room, more than homerooms and bedrooms. It is difficult for them to grow and move beyond what makes parents nervous or uncomfortable.

Learning, for children, is continual. It is not confined to classrooms. Most of it takes place at home and in the neighborhood. Trying to have peace of mind by ensuring a child's complete safety at all times will restrict learning. Keeping our precious babies on leashes or caged in when we can't watch them might be okay for puppies but not children if we expect healthy development.

Overparenting hurts a child more than it helps. It puts them in danger of not being able to think for themselves. If children spoke as freely to their parents as they do to their friends, they'd probably say, “Back up off me Mama” or “Give me some room to breathe Baba.”