Wax Rhapsodic

and your work your art.

Or We Can Make Excuses

In order for the economy to recover, we need jobs, right?  Jobs means wages.  Wages mean income.  Income means consumption. And consumption makes up 70% of all the goods and services consumed in the country.  All the goods and services consumed, when viewed in aggregate is called GDP or Gross Domestic Product.  Arguably, gross domestic product in and of itself is flawed, but I’ll touch on that in a later post.

Corporate America is currently lean and ridiculously healthy.  There is cash on everyone’s balance sheet and companies are running more efficient than ever.  The fat has been trimmed. Wall Street has been pleased with the earnings and performance of American companies, but here is my qualifier: for the most part.  The volatility in the market place is largely attributed to matters overseas and arguably, the availability of information. The markets react in real-time.  Cycles have been shortened, therefore volatility has seemingly increased.  Are you following the bouncing ball?

So my question is what if the jobs data doesn’t matter?  And this is hard for me to say.  For someone who has studied economics and finds it riveting to the point of contemplating having the equation for gross domestic product tattooed on my body, it’s hard for me to question what I will freely confess is my faith.  Yes, I belong to the Church of Economics.  Faith by definition is having belief regardless or any type, if available, of rational explanation, right?  So you believing the jobs data or GDP as a true measurement of the well-being of our economy… That is arguably faith, isn’t it?  

So back to the matter at hand, what if jobs data doesn’t matter?  The jobs number is a figure that shows the net of jobs added and jobs lost in a given month in America.  So if 160,000 jobs were created in any given month of any given year, that is the total number of jobs created less the total number of jobs lost.  But I see my generation moving away from the ball-and-chain of a desk job.  Many young folks are becoming entrepreneurs.  And not only that, but some are service-oriented and they barter services.  Others have their hands in multiple lines of businesses conducted via the internet selling goods, giving seminars, writing and blogging.  Furthermore, many young people are moving towards a project-based lifestyle with more freedom.  The model of get a degree, get a job, die is slowly evaporating into the ether.  So what if you have kids who are making a live by creating niche market places online?  Young people who are creating start-ups or working on small projects where they generate a wad of cash and then move onto the next project for the next wad?  What if barter is more rampant that we’ve imagined.  In time of recession (which we are no longer in), people go back to the basics, barter being as basic as basic gets.  All I’m saying is, how are we going to measure all these little blips that generate economic activity?  The world is quickly changing and our infrastructure and ability to keep tabs on it all cannot keep up.

You may not think so (mostly because you may not even know how to THINK), but we live in fucking interesting times.

Live well,

Poxlyfe 

Great read on milk. Does the Wisconson Milk Board overstate dairy benefits to children?

I mean, when you think about it, we’re drinking the milk of another species!  That’s like if I breast fed my dog… Jusssaying.

Educate thyself,

P

is currency.