Waxing Poetically: Addressing Culture with a Twist of Poetry

It seems to be one of the most obvious no-brainers known to man; namely that if people want to have money they must work. Second, they after acquiring that money from such work, must live within their means by budgeting that money according to their priorities - preferably with their needs first, and their wants later. But in doing so - engaging in time-tested thrift and frugality they run the all too paradoxical and counter-intuitive risk of destroying the economy.

When they are young, boy and girls are told to save money, earn a dollar, or to not buy something unless they can afford it. Yet, as they blossom into wide-eyed, open-mind adults, they step eagerly and easily in to a world of things - big things and small things, short things and tall things; things that ring and thing that sing; ipods and iphones and things that they don’t own — like a cellphone that makes French toast for them while they take their morning showers. But do they need all that? No, but they probably think they do.

in a Capitalist society, the simple idea is that anyone, anywhere, at anytime can make unlimited amounts of money given that he or she has the drive to do so. It sounds great, right? Right. Having the all possibilities before his eyes or in his imagination is every seven year-old boy’s Peter Pan dream; and as the fable goes, little girls often like pretty things like diamond rings. But the trap is an insidious one. To get the nice things, businesses must make money, and to make money, other people must buy things. But in a recession as the world is in now, people have overspent, lived the Neverland dream beyond their means, and now have no money for “things.” And so, businesses cannot sell because buyers won’t buy, but the only way to recover is to spend — but no one can. People then lose their jobs because employers can’t pay them, nor hire new workers — Capitalism is funny that way; that the dream of a better day can be crushed by itself so easily and still have the full hope of resurrection.

United States President-elect Barack Obama Addresses the Nation (Breaking News)

Wax frugally!

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