Crazy Thoughts - Part Two

Welcome to 2009…well, a bit late, but whose reading this anyways? A new year equals a new start, right? Not if you are unemployed and currently looking for a job. Those of us who have tried to start up our own companies in the past few years to try and beat the economy are only now realizing that the economy wins…every time. Is it a dire time for small businesses? You bet it is. For a country founded on the success of small business, yes, even Wal-Mart was small at one point in time; it sure doesn’t look like small business will be the way out of these doldrums. Nope, this time it looks like our new government will be bailing us all out…or so we think.

For anyone out there who thinks Obama et al will be the answer to all our prayers, think again. The state of the US today is such that it will take years, decades even, to unravel the mess we have all had a part in getting ourselves into. Yes, if you project the economy out over the next fifty or so years Social Security will be bankrupt, Medicare will be gone, and we will all be working well into our 80s, except no one wants to hire anyone over 50. Admit it employers, you’d rather have a 20-something go getter on your payroll than an experienced 60+ person, wouldn’t you? Sure, no employer will admit it, but that’s just reality.

Ok, projecting out the economy until it looks so bleak everyone should just go out and kill themselves right now is not the answer. As a matter of fact, this daydreamer thinks that won’t even be a reality. The US Economy has shown over the past 200+ years an amazing way of correcting itself, just like the environment has shown over the past 50 years. Yes, it certainly makes sense to conserve our natural resources, but haven’t we been doing that all along? Look at China. They are using twenty times more fossil fuel than the US, but no one looks to them as the culprit..nope, that’s us, the good old USA, because we always put ourselves out there as a model for all others to follow. That model just won’t work anymore. There are too many countries out there that are doing it smarter, faster, cheaper and better than us, and we had better learn from them fast, or we will be working into our 80s.

But I digress, big time! How will the USA heal itself of this potentially catastrophic economical collapse? I have a few suggestions, for anyone out there listening. No, I’m not a Harvard economics professor, nor have I graduated from the Warren Buffet School of Investing, although he’s even taking it on the chin these days. What I am is what many of you are out there, a small business owner who is trying to slog their way through this rotten economy while keeping their business afloat. So, here go my suggestions….

Spend more! Savings are overrated, and while we all watch our 401Ks turn into 201Ks and worse, why not put that money to work in something that is not related to the declining stock market? Property, real estate, is a great buy right now…it can’t go down much further. While everyone is defaulting on those ridiculous mortgages, it’s time for those who have some money to swoop in and claim our retirement assets once again. Look at it this way, you’re just taking your retirement dollars and putting them someplace else that is less risky.

My second suggestion would be to stop buying luxury cars. The amount of people in Southern California driving Lexus, Mercedes, Infinity, BMW, Hummer and the like is ridiculous. Does one need a car that costs over 50K to get them to the grocery store and back? What happened to the good old Ford, Chevy and GM cars that seem to sprout up all over the Midwest but not out here? We need cheap transportation that is ready to go when we are. The age of the luxury automobile has to stop now.

Well, that’s enough pontificating for one evening. Let me know if anyone out there is reading this. If not, I’ll just keep writing more and more crazy thoughts until someone reads it and says, “what a weirdo!” THEN I’ll KNOW I have something to say!

Cheers,

The Product Accelerator