Band-Aid Economics.

[coloradodem2005]

Consumer confidence has gone down, unemployment ticked back up .1%, most of the jobs created were in construction or retail, and the construction jobs were in some ways already there. Yet everybody in the news is touting this "recovery." Why? Because if people think that this is a recovery, they will buy and we will have a more genuine recovery. It sounds good in theory. People buy into this and even if they have a shitty job and little money they go buy stuff they don't need and can't afford. This is coming from a guy who even if he is not buying his own clothes, tries to find the best deals and will not spend obsceme amounts of money on clothes. Hell right now I am just wearing a pair of jeans and a Michigan Sweatshirt. I digress.

THe thing is, people feel better, so the go spend, spend, spend. Things look better for awhile, until people shoot themselves in the foot because they spend too much. Then things go downhill again. It is not a long-term solution. It will not fix things for individual Americans or America. We need good jobs. We need them, but we cannot rely on a dot com bubble or something like it to provide them. My point is that we need to think long-term as well as today, in order to build a vibrant and truly strong economy. We would also compete in the global market better.