Yesterday, The New York Times (Sunday edition) devoted almost a full page of its Op-Ed section to a number of short essays written by economists, Wall Street analysts, scholars and fellows at various “think tanks” (both liberal and conservative) government advisers (past or present) and prominent business people (many of these folks fit into more than one category, by the way). The question they were all asked to address: Are We in a Recession?
In the beautiful prose of their well written pontifications, some answered this question “No,” some said “Maybe,” some said “Yes” and some said “Yes, but …” Some of them claimed that the recession likely will be severe, while others, more sanguine of our prospects, said that it likely would not. All wrote very well argued, well supported opinions. Indeed, many of these no doubt highly intelligent, no doubt highly educated and no doubt well compensated folks offered up a potpourri of statistics regarding the US economy, including figures on our gross domestic product (i.e., GDP), consumer spending, core inflation rate, the real estate market, the home mortgage/credit crisis, and even on US exports (which one gentleman tried very hard to argue will save America’s bacon regardless of how bad the everything else gets) to buttress their contentions.
Not one of them used any profane or obscene language to describe our current economic situation such as you often find on certain wild and woolly liberal blogs, where silly, dirty hippies congregate to spout their ill informed opinions to the nameless hordes surfing the internets. No, these are all respectable, serious people, whose serious resumes and serious opinions were no doubt suitably vetted by the serious editors at the estimable (and super-serious) New York Times.
Oddly enough (well, not really, I just like to use the word odd in all its varieties when discussing serious purveyors of news and public opinion such as, for example, The New York Times) there was one significant group of individuals who apparently were not asked to contribute to this discussion by answering the question posed by the Times’ editors, as to whether “we” are in a recession (and I’m using we here in the same sense as that term is used in the phrase “We the People” in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America, rather than limiting it to any “subset” of said “we” such as financial institutions, economists, investors, fellows at well known non-profit educational and policy foundations or highly compensated, highly educated, and highly intelligent people offered the chance to present their opinions on the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times). Can you guess who those people might be, the ones whose opinions were deemed unsuitable for inclusion alongside all of these well spoken and well informed worthies the Times chose to answer this question of serious concern to all Americans?
Maybe this article from the Detroit Free Press the other day can give you a hint:
The job market in Michigan is so tough that for some even moving to Iraq sounds good.
The pay is high, as much as $212,000 for a yearlong stint.
So Friday, in the first hour of a Warren job fair for work maintaining military vehicles in Iraq, about 100 people came looking to apply.
“There’s no money coming in right now. There are no jobs. There is nothing,” J.J. Woodman, 30, of Hazel Park said. “I’ve been on the computer and driving around for four months — there’s nothing. Everybody wants to make it sound good, but when it comes down to it, nobody is hiring. Everybody is laying off.” […]
The U.S. Army TACOM Life Cycle Management Command’s Red River Depot in Texarkana, Texas, wants to hire more than 500 people to work in Iraq for one year and one day. About 600 applications were submitted Friday.
The depot has held similar job fairs in the South, but organizers said they thought the Detroit area might be promising with its high population of autoworkers and the lack of jobs.
That’s right, dear readers, the people who The New York Times did not chose to answer its very serious question “Are We in a Recession” are people looking for work. People so desperate that they are willing to risk their lives and the real possibility of sexual assault in order to land a position with the US Military to work in Iraq. People without any better options. People already experiencing first hand what a recession feels like, an experience I somehow doubt most of the highly intelligent, highly educated and highly compensated experts the Times chose to answer its question have ever had the opportunity to suffer through themselves.
Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t be hearing what all these bright, brilliant, accomplished and adroit experts on our economy have to say about our current economic conditions and our (“our” used here to refer to you, me and everyone else residing in the Land of the Free) economy’s prospects for the future. We would be fools not to consider what they, with all their knowledge and “experience” have to tell us.
But wouldn’t it be nice if, for once, alongside all those clever, talented, erudite people who have spent their careers in academia or government or high finance thinking their deep thoughts about these profoundly important matters, we also had the opportunity to hear, in the pages of the “Nation’s Newspaper of Record,” from people who have a little more experience (of the “up close and personal” kind) vis-a-vis our current economy? People who have lost their jobs due to gross mismanagement and mistakes by the elite corporate executives who led many of our banks, mortgage companies, automobile manufacturers, etc. into bankruptcy and financial ruin. People who are unemployed or underemployed? People working two lower paying jobs to make ends meet because they can’t find a job in their field. People who lost their health insurance when they lost their jobs, or who live in fear each day that they will be the next ones to be kicked to the curb by our Grand and Glorious Global Economy.
You know, the sort of people who never get an opportunity to write an opinion piece for The New York Times, that bastion of journalistic excellence and influence, even if they might be just as highly educated, just as highly intelligent and just as erudite as those upon whom the editors of the Times choose to bestow such boons. People who can put a face to all the dry economic statistics cited, and the confusing jargon (not that there’s anything wrong with that) employed, by the highly gifted, highly qualified “experts” in their no doubt extremely extensive explications of the problems plaguing our economy. Maybe — just maybe — the people on the front lines of Bush’s war on the poor and middle class might have something relevant to say about the state of our world of which even an expert in finance or economics or government policy might not be aware.
Whattayathink?
