Thursday, September 25, 2008

The Fabulous Life of.....The Next Great Depression!



















photo courtesy: bartblog.bartcop.com

Ok, I get it. We're screwed. We're all doomed and destined to survive off of one loaf of bread and a box of steel oatmeal a week for the rest of our lives. The second Great Depression looms.... Trust me I get it.

Having been inspired by Rachel Maddow's amazing Halloween Candy metaphor and some real life events that occurred as I got ready for work this morning, I thought of a metaphor of my own.

The way I look at it, our current economic dilemma is kinda like when you're in the bathroom, brushing your teeth or combing your hair and suddenly you knock a bottle of very expensive lotion (or perfume or whatever) into the toilet. NOOOOOOO!!!!

Now, at this moment you are faced with a very serious decision. Do you stick your hand into the filthy toilet to fish it out, quickly throw it into the sink and scald it with hot water to salvage it? Or do you just leave it there and decide that your prized item, no matter the value, is not worth the putting yourself in a revolting situation. The reality is, both options suck. Economic Bailout= sticking hand in toilet, No Economic Bailout= Losing Prize Possessions.

The thing that's really bugging me today is how everyone is acting so fucking surprised that this Economic Bailout issue has happened. The truth is, the American people are just as much to blame for this predicament as the wankers on Wall Street.

You can't sit idly by watching as investment houses and private lenders get richer and richer, all the while glorifying their spendthrift lifestyle and not expect some sort of repercussion. For years, they've flaunted great monetary wealth in front of our faces. Did the American people not wonder at all where that money was coming from and whether it was being dealt with responsibly?

And it's too late to assign blame now. Ain't it a bitch?

There is not one place in the world that I can think of that has had such a slow deterioration of its economic values over the last decade than in the U.S. All you really have to do is turn on the television to prove that. We have programs that idolize and glorify this ridiculously wasteful and irresponsible behavior of the wealthy. Programs like "The Real Housewives of Orange County"- on Bravo, (insipid women who place just as much value on plastic surgery, designer clothes and social status as average people place on their families and careers) "The Fabulous Life of... Filthy Rich Billionaires, Super Spenders, The Hamptons" on VH1 or "My Super Sweet Sixteen"(MTV)- ( a show in which spoiled, vapid rich 15-year-olds browbeat their out-of-touch and idiotic parents into spending tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars for their stupid birthday parties) have long been brainwashing our next generation of spenders and savers.

Now, anyone who knows me well can attest to the fact that I have fairly socialist leanings when it comes to independent wealth and how it should be distributed in society. And of course, I always manage to find myself bumping heads with one pro-Capitalism person or another on a regular basis. What's amusing to me today is that a lot of the pro-capitalist arguments that I've heard, well, seem pretty lame right now. I mean, sure there are still mega mega millionaires in the top percentage of our population, but is this whole economic debacle not proof enough that even those with that kind of money don't really know how to be responsible with it?

I say, lets turn the nation's (remaining) wealth over the the people like you and me. The people that actually know the value of stretching a dollar and saving up for a rainy day, because inevitably there are many. Not the people who think it's perfectly normal and okay to spend $30,000 on a diamond studded collar for their fucking Chihuahua.

Granted I'm making some giant leaps here between our current Economic situation and my dislike of stupid rich ass wipes, but hey, I've been looking for a reason to call them out for a while now. So there. Take that rich jerks!








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