We Can Make Better Choices

It seems that just when the economic news cannot get any worse and the stock market continues its daily dive, the Dow does an about face; down nearly 400 points, it closed up 550 points today. I kept wondering what the good news was since there has been nothing but a constant barrage of articles detailing how most of America's once solid blue chip companies are all coming apart at their financial seams; crumbling right before our very eyes. Name any company you know and the odds are it is suffering and either laying people off to stay afloat or begging the government for money. Even the U.S. Postal service plans to layoff 40,000 workers, the first layoffs in the entire history of the Post Office.

As jobless claims start to hit old records, it is clear that they soon will set new records. In these tough times, Americans have little money to spend and the only companies that seem to be faring well are McDonald's and Walmart; people are eating health-busting cheap food and are shopping for quality-busting cheap products. We eat, expand, then squeeze ourselves into our Walmart-perfect stretch pants. The implications to our health and the health-care system is a whole other story but at least we can go back to Walmart for their discount flat-rate prescription drugs.

It is like that commercial with the ubiquitous 'as seen on TV guy' selling us on that new glue-like solution to easily mend our clothing and other textiles and that the product is so fantastic, we can actually use it to mend our parachutes (cut to visual of person parachuting out of a plane); are we really too lazy to sit down and mend our parachutes the old-fashioned way (via needle and thread or sewing machine) that we would risk our lives on a $20 bottle of glue? Rice and beans are cheap food too; we can make better choices.

And this is really what it comes down to in the end; we have to stop being lazy and make better choices, about our health, our finances, our lives, our outlook and we have to get our butts out there and do something about it. The next few years are not going to be pretty - the landscape is changing quickly. Some of us will do better than others, those who do, be grateful; those who don't, try harder; and those who can't, thank the Democrats.