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9.9.11

Time to walk the walk, and talk the talk.

We have a lot of money today; forty trillion dollars worth, wrapped in neat little bundles marked unfiltered debt. This unfiltered debt is very much like a pack of gigantic cigarettes sold to the public without the general statutory warning. What you realise on your own is that this debt is completely traceable to our present and immediate past, yet marks the immediate present and future generations as bearers who are to suffer for no crime of their own. 40 Trillion, bears a lot of zeroes and is a huge burden on us plus the world.
An article in the Globe and Mail expressed how we are devolving at least the majority, of us bottom feeders, into a subsistence economy, existing hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck, ‘per the article the CPA reported 57 per cent of the population would be in difficulty if their pay were delayed by even a week’. In a subsequent article Barack Obama was seeking legislative backing for economic stimulus worth $450-billion (U.S.), making the U.S. President a lonely advocate for spending at a moment dominated by calls for austerity.
Our world shrinks, the degrees of separation from the next individual dissolves over finger taps on mutating social networks, our every whim and fantasy can be packaged, gift wrapped and delivered to us without our removing cheese stained hands from the appendix like appendage we lovingly call the remote. Yet I must emphasise we cannot have our dreams delivered without credit, or without stockpiling loose change into empty jam jars or jamming the one off five dollar bills under the mattress.
Our world is getting expensive ladies and gentlemen. Our means of income are only getting smaller and smaller, the rate of unemployment has increased in Canada to 7.3 %, and U.S Unemployment remains at 9.1%. The Euro Zone Unemployment looms at 10.00%. I do not bring up the lower levels of unemployment in developing countries because 4% of a large population is still a substantial number. As job insecurity looms we stick to our comfort zones, do not take risks, tighten the noose like belt a little more, in short we do everything we can to stay afloat.
Being hard working does not cut it anymore, it does not rubber stamp a bright future, unless it would involve sitting near the bank of a river with a fishing pole awaiting our next meal, and living in  threadbare cast offs. Most of us I believe would not be ok with this scenario. Not unless we morphed into reality stars on some extreme living show and stood to make money out of our extreme plight. In truth and reality we’d probably get picked on or shot at, if we walked into any town with a stack of fish in hand, and not much else.
I do not mean this to be a wake-up call or even an aside cynical statement; my Economics degree and the contents that led to it are buried deep inside the meatloaf constitution  that is my 'dial stuck on warp speed aging' brain. What I fear is that eventually this lack of funds is going to stop the spending, Trust me I do believe it is good to be frugal I have experience of this first hand, 'of not being frugal' that is. But eventually someone’s got to spend the money or it could lead eventually to someone else on dole. The second someone else who would otherwise have been working somewhere else making what we spent money on. The hard truth is if we stop spending money now, someone will be out of a job and will need UI at some point. This UI money will come back to haunt us as more of our tax dollars that desperately needs to be spent on developing infrastructure, schools, and pensions is going to be utilised replenishing UI which would have been avoided if we did not stop spending money in the first instance. But I believe we could spark a movement in this conveyor belt, that rolls around the world and dispenses prosperity, poverty, inflation and deflation in unequal measures. We could all start small. It is a simple concept you may say, but as we begin to live paycheck to paycheck, and spending gets tougher and tougher the ramifications are no longer restricted to your local mom and pop store or the neighbourhood grocery store. It is domestic, it is international. It is a global conveyance of a lethargic economic movement. Small steps people. Shop around, get the something you want and need, if possible start with something domestic, but I strongly suggest that you spend within your liquid cash limit, do not go into debt but spend reasonably and sensibly if you can, and know that it is keeping somebody working, and their world is turning another day and in the end so is yours and mine.
This world needs a push, who better to get behind and push, than a force of six billion people. But hey who's counting.

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