Recession needs new definition
A look at what the word "recession" really means in America.
Monday, January 28th, 2008
Lately, I can’t turn on a television without having a pundit scream at me that the world is heading for a recession, and as any student of philosophy will vouch, when a majority of pundits agree on something, that makes it true. But what does the word “recession” mean? I have vague grade-school memories of endless monotony that mercifully ended when the teacher said, “OK, class, now it’s recession time.” And then I got to climb on the monkey bars. Aren’t recessions fun?
No, in fact, recessions are not fun, and you should be ashamed to ask such a foolish question. Everyone around you now thinks a little bit less of you (and you thought that wasn’t possible).
Recessions are like a junior high dance when the DJ plays a slow song: Everyone knows they don’t want to stand near the wall with their friends, but that’s what they end up doing anyway. Ronald Reagan quipped that a recession was when your neighbor lost his job and a depression was when you lost yours, and then he orchestrated the Reagan Recession of 1982, in part so that my family would move to Los Angeles. (Thanks, Ron!)
Around the world, recession means different things. It might mean famine or homelessness. Here in America, it means something else. As Darion Hammie recently told the Wall Street Journal, it means shopping at regular grocery stores instead of Whole Foods, a natural foods grocer. “I have to make choices I never thought I would have to make,” she said.
Others who are feeling the pinch are avatars, digital characters made by online users. A run on banks in Second Life, a ultimate universe for avatars, has prompted the controlling company to close all banking operations. Kenyans and Indonesians were too busy wiping tears of laughter from their eyes to comment.
Ambrosia Ortiz, a University of New Mexico student protesting the rising cost of birth control, told local television station KRQE her reason for caring for other women was “so they don’t have to make a choice between their birth control and their cell phone bill or their birth control and their gym membership. These are choices that women shouldn’t have to make.”
It seems Ortiz has taken Franklin Roosevelt’s freedom from want to its logical end. Why make choices between such life-sustaining staples as cell phones, gym memberships, and birth control? Why not have them all? Most American college students probably think “scarcity” is a means of evaluating a horror movie’s ability to create fear.
America is an incredibly prosperous nation, and I am grateful that I enjoy so many benefits of that prosperity. But I at least have the presence of mind to not complain about how hard it is for me to watch standard definition television or drive a seven-year-old car. Having to shop at Aldi shouldn’t qualify as an economic hardship, and wearing jeans from Wal-Mart, no matter how embarrassingly pedestrian you might think it is, would still be considered embarrassingly decadent in most of the world.
We cry for our avatars we can’t afford to feed, but our dry eyes blink incomprehensibly to the plight of Africans and Asians who can’t feed their children. Then we turn the channel to “American Idol” and seethe at its availability in HDTV and our television’s incompatibility.
American recessions are unlike recessions anywhere else on earth.
Minster is a Lawrence senior in economics.
Discussion
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The usual jabs at women and the poor. Are you seriously an economics major? This is all you have?
this is quite funny. I didn't cuss or call any one names yet you still removed my comment because you disagree. How much access do you guys have to my information? I realize that you guys like to discuss your own articles, but this is the second time this semester that you have removed my non-offensive post. What gives? I've read worse posts on other letters?
linguo, did the staff add back your comment? is it the one from 1/28 7:36am?...probably took it out because it was so silly. what jabs at women and the poor are you talking about? isn't the artile pointing out how we fail to realize the needs of others around the globe as we sip bottled water etc. I thought it was pretty funny. You seem so defensive about everything written. Easy, easy settle down...It is an OPINION column.
Linguo, it's hard to take you seriously. I try, because I'm just that nice a guy, but you have to know that I have no ability to remove any posts, nor do I have access to information. Of course, you know exactly who I am, and you can easily find my address and phone number, but as soon as you start to think maybe I can find out your name, you come up with paranoid ramblings. Look over your shoulder, quick! I'm watching you!
My article contains no jabs at women and the poor. It contains jabs at Darion Hammie and Ambrosia Ortiz, but I can see them as individuals, not as members of a group identity. I jabbed at Darion and Ambrosia, not at women. And as for the poor, my article is written in defense of the world's poor who experience real hardship while rich Americans convince themselves they are poor.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you think the industrialization of India and China is a bad thing. Am I right? Yet you console yourself with thoughts of caring for the poor.
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