frustration Friday

Frustration Friday: Narrow Perspectives, Broad Problems

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I have a college degree.  People like myself will have a much lesser unemployment rate than people with less education.

I live in Silicon Valley.  I have access to jobs and jobs resources others may not have if they're not in a region like that.

I am in my early 40's.  I'm not old enough that my age is an issue in my career – in some cases, it's an advantage.

I try to stay aware of what it's like for other people, those with different education, those with different locations.  My experience in this economy is not the experience of others – in fact it may be radically different from what they experience.  I count myself fortunate that I have friends around the world in different situations as there's someone there to kick my butt when I think the rest of the world lives like I do.

It's tough and I'm a news junkie – I still follow what's up in Greece.  But I worry that I – and others – may not have the broad perspectives we need to help solve the economic problems the world faces.  Or at the very least our perspectives will be too narrow and we'll inadvertently forget those who suffer who aren't like us.

The Great Recession has hit people hard, but who is hit and how hard they're hit varies radically by education, location, profession, and more.  My experience is probably not your experience, your experience is not your best friend's experience, and so on.  The pain is not distributed evenly.

So in the months and years and decades to come as we all hopefully work to solve the fallout from the Great Recessions, repair our economies, humiliate the incompetent, and lock up the right people, I worry we'll loose perspective.

Will those of us in the regions that are ideal for geeks forget those that aren't – and those with economic problems?

What of those of us with the degrees that let us find jobs – will we forget what others are going through?

Will those of us old enough have the experience to get jobs forget the young?

Will those of us young enough to not worry about our older age forget those who are already aged – and will we be surprised when we're their age?

I worry we won't keep the proper perspectives.  That we'll push for recoveries and policies that affect what we think is everyone but is really just us.  Then we won't notice the half-baked ideas we've pushed and asked for didn't quite do it – because we'll move in our own spheres and circles, until we painfully realize just how connected the world is.

– Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: EconoPolitics and Frustration

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Ever want to talk about economic issues like jobs or banks or regulation and not get into politics?  You can't.

Economic issues are political issues because they deal with law and taxes and spending and everything else.  Political policy is economic policy and nothing you can say can change that because society really is an integrated whole, and people get pretty damn political about money.  You cannot separate economics and politics.

Now, if you think of that for a moment, are you surprised that we have tons of unemployed people, ruined economies, and general financial stupidity?

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Frustration Friday: The Experiments!

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I hope you like science, because guess what?  Economically we are in the middle of a huge set of experiments in America.  You may not think of them as experiments but they are – in the sense that actions were taken and results most certainly followed.  Last week I talked about how we're in unknown territories, so consider this metaphor another way of looking at our situation.

* The US tried less financial regulation.  We learned that was pretty bloody bad.
* We're finding out what happens when a large quantity of people looking for work have to take 6 months on average to find a job.
* We're finding out just how long you can extend unemployment benefits for people.
* We learned what happened when you tie together a lot of different European countries with one currency.
* We're finding out how welfare and social systems can stretch.
* We're finding out  . . .

Well you can fill in any number of blanks.

We've been subjected to all sorts of economic theories over the years, great efforts, plenty of papers, and of course various political and economic policies.  As the world grows smaller and more complex, as the changes speed up because of technology and globalization, we've basically tried a whole lot to keep the economic ball in the air.

So now, in the Great Recession, we're primed to learn an awful lot about the things our economics and politicians and the like have been writing about, theorizing about, lying about, and the like.

What frustrates me is that we may not learn from all of this.  That we'll have people resort to ideology and deception and hiding to save their egos and bank accounts as opposed to learn.

But the experiments have been done.  These are no-going back experiments.

Learning or not is the question.  The willingness to learn is.

– Steven Savage