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Grudgingly, most of us have finally been convinced of our economic plight. For several years, many journalists, politicians and broadcasters have worked tirelessly to convince us our economy was steadily worsening, but most of us disagreed and were suspicious of so much negative news being reported when conditions didn’t seem to warrant it. Now that we have succumbed I’m sure we won’t read or hear many positive financial news accounts until some of our current policymakers have been replaced with ones whose economic ideas are more in tune with those of the reporting journalists and broadcasters.
We all know that journalists sometimes use powerful words like “plunge” and “soar” to describe changing stock market conditions and at other times refer to similar conditions as corrections. Words used, of course, depend on what emotional response the journalist wants to elicit. Wariness is an inherited trait selected for all of us by natural selection. Like all inherited traits, it exists in the population on a continuum. Some are more suspicious and distrustful than others. It manifests itself whenever individuals get a feeling they are in danger, being manipulated, or deceived by others. Wariness aside, we now realize just how poor we have become but most of us don’t know what to do about it. We can’t get a better paying job because we are told greedy businesses are closing and moving overseas where they have access to cheaper labor and pay fewer taxes. We can’t give up cigarettes, beer, snacks, or lottery tickets because we are told they are addictions, so we must have them, and besides, having the addictions are not our fault. Instead, we are incessantly reminded to cut our use of high-priced gasoline and food in order to balance our budgets. Also, we are told to adjust our thermostats to help the environment and lower our heating and cooling bills.
I have another suggestion: discontinuing most of our entertainment expenses, minimizing tax obligations, reducing demands for government services, and refusing requests for all political donations, and limiting charitable ones until the economic storm subsides, would significantly reduce our household cash outlays. Whenever we are tempted to purchase any product or service we should first ask “do I really need this?” In my opinion, newspapers and some magazines, visits to theme parks, cocktail parties, cruises, movie theater and symphony tickets, DVDs and cable television would be much easier to do without than cigarettes, beer and lottery tickets, but that’s just me. By limiting our exposure to advertisers’ lure we will retain more resources for our families’ real needs and more money to give to our favorite charities, like Special Olympics and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, thereby reducing our tax payments, and more time for reading good, inexpensive books like mine: Settled Science.
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