Hello boys and girls. The new year is upon us and we are optimistic about 2013. The longest recession in the history of the US may be, and I repeat, may be, at its wain. Certainly most signs seem to point to recovery from a dismal past, yet feelings of pain still linger. With whom are we to place our trust? Equities, that appear so attractive, yet harbor serious questions about p/e ratios and beta indices? Bonds that beg for refinance at the next dip in interest rates? Gold, Oil, Real Estate, Natural Gas, Commodities, Llama farms, Chinchilla pelts? Nowhere can be found an adequate place to park money that needs 1) liquidity and 2) reasonable ROR. Do not hold your breath for that to change this year. The Fed has decided that low interest rates are the only thing that is keeping this economy propped up, like a rag doll in the window.
What has happened since 2008 is that companies have grown used to living with a skeleton crew and have convinced themselves that all is well. All is not well, however. We, the public, end up with crappy service and crappy products that beg for the extra set of eyes or ears that may have caught the defective item/person but due to cuts have fallen by the wayside. Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that incompetence did not exist in 2007, on the contrary, it was just as rampant. We seem to lack to ability to focus on customer satisfaction in good times and bad.
Education is an example of the convoluted logic that exists, at least in CA, regardless of the economic conditions. Someone, somewhere, decided that we should spend more money on prisons and welfare than on educating our kids. Did it ever occur to anyone that if we spent more on education, we inherently would spend less on prisons and welfare? I don't care what language you speak, if you are given the opportunity to learn and be a productive member of society, you have a better chance of not having/wanting to get free stuff from the government or languishing in our prison system. Prisoners do not pay taxes. We need more tax payers, not less. Educated people pay taxes, at least they are supposed to. We need less people getting free stuff from the government, not more. Educated people rarely get free stuff, they almost always pay retail. Groupon deals rock their world. I have to buy glue sticks for my kid's Kindergarten class, yet the person in front of me at the grocery store can get 24 cans of soda, a big bag of Cheetos, some beef jerky, and some licorice for free? I know and realize families do need assistance at times, and I sympathize with them. My beef is with the people who abuse the system, and with those that created it.
Telling is the fact that in CA's best year of education funding on a per student basis in the last 20 years (2007), we still ranked 50th out of 51(DC included). We are now so far in last place we can't even see 2nd to last. Yet, our budget for prisons and welfare exceeds that of every other state. Really? That is what we are going to hang our hat on? How are we to explain this to our children? Better yet, who is accountable? As someone once said, sanity is a hard thing to detect in an insane asylum.
