Capitalism: A Love Story; Ghost Country USA

I just finished watching Michael Moore's new movie Capitalism: A Love Story. I have been criticized as a pessimist on Facebook, called Debbie downer, and some more names. I have been speaking up about how this recession is far from over and we have hardly seen the worst of it yet. The worst has yet to begin. After watching the movie, I decided that I am not a pessimist as everyone claims but a realist. I have watched my own empire collapse right before my own eyes.

A few years back, I was talking to one of my neighbors and I remember telling him that since I owned my own business, "I will never have to worry about money again.". At the time I was about 27 years old, had 5 houses and 7 vehicles and a business that was bringing in anywhere between $5,000 and $12,000 a WEEK in profit. Even if the worst scenario possible unfolded before my very eyes, I could just cut back on everything and survive on the minimum... right? I'm not even so sure anymore. So where did all of the money go that I made over the few good years that were there? I put ALL of it into real estate, the one thing that had a proven history of success over the last 50 years.  Two houses I own are now being foreclosed on. I lost everything that I worked so hard for in less than a year. I have watched my entire business evaporate before my eyes. I went from five employees down to one, and I can't lay him off or there will be no one to do the little work there is. But if it comes down to it, I will have to terminate him and find someone part time. 263,000 more jobs were lost in September of 2009. The new numbers won't come out for about 2 more weeks, though they are expecting 175,000 more jobs to be lost.

 Well, I have watched for about 18 months now of businesses laying people off constantly. In fact more than 6.9 MILLION people have been laid off since the recession started in December of 2007. This number does not factor into the equation, the 81% of 1.5 MILLION of college graduates in 2009 who were not able to find work. This brings the total equation to 8.4 MILLION people who do not have employment, that currently want to be employed. Now, this is simple economics, we have more variables to this simple equation. My dad worked for two companies and by the grace of God, was able to retire from both companies before something catastrophic happened to his position and benefits. He left the market right before the recession started, from a position that was paying six figures. His more than $100,000 a year job was likely replaced by a much lower paid employee, if the position was even replaced and the work was just not divided up among the other employees. Just to give his former employer benefit of the doubt, lets say that his position was replaced with another position paying 1/3 of what he was making. Where is that statistic in the equation above? It does not appear, correct. Now you are finally starting to grasp how truly catastrophic this recession is going to get. Here are some more variables. I believe, that most of those 6.9 MILLION people were able to get some type of assistance, whether it was unemployment, food stamps, or even just severance pay. Those people are using that money to survive as we speak. Now, what happens when those 8.4 MILLION people have completely run out of assistance? What happens when 8.4 MILLION people (and that number will continue to grow, since Sun Microsystems just laid off 3,000 workers two days ago), have not been able to work for not just 6 months or a year, but they have not been able to work for 3 or 4 years? How are all of these people going to survive without any income whatsoever?

Michael's movie shows clips from The Great Depression, which no one in the work force today has any idea what it was like. This is America, and we like to remain positive and believe that bad things cannot happen to good people. We also believe that bad things happen to everyone else and that certain things could never happen to us. I mean if you have an MBA from University of North Carolina and have 15 years of experience, you would never in a million years believe that you would ever have a remotely difficult time finding a job. Well, America has changed and as one analogy put it in the movie, the problem has been ignored for so long, that this crisis unfolding in front of us cannot simply be corrected by throwing billions of dollars back into an economy where the same people who put the economic balance into this unbalanced state are the ones using that bailout money to pay for their own bonuses.


You can continue to be optimistic about the economy and that things will simply get better with time. That is after all, what the media wants you to believe. You will not hear CNN reporting about how this country could potentially be overflowing with squatters, looters, and lawlessness. It can happen. I HOPE IT DOES NOT HAPPEN. But you would be a complete fool to think that that jobless number cannot grow to 15 million. ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN. Murphy's Law is this economic crisis. This is the perfect storm of events that have been decades in the making. All of these big businesses have been sucking money out of lower America and sticking it into their own executives pockets, instead of reinvesting that money into the future of the greater good of humanity and to create more jobs. An executive or CEO cannot be happy with a $500,000 a year salary? Why does one man like Ken Chenault of American Express really need $20, $30, $40, or even $50 MILLION dollars a year to do a job that could probably be done by someone with a High School diploma? You can call me a pessimist, but this catastrophe is not going to disappear anytime soon and with the rate of 1.5 MILLION college graduates entering the work force each year AND again we are not even including the High School graduates and drop outs entering the work force.

"In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose. (truncated) We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure." -- Jimmy Carter July 15, 1979

The Ex-President already saw the signs of the future a quarter century ahead of time. The entire U.S. economy revolves around profiting from people's debts and desires not from their needs. This country is about to see more things that we never thought possible in our lifetime. Stay tuned, it can ALWAYS get worse. Some say the DOW Jones is a good indicator that the economy is recovering. Are you serious? Why is our country in denial? Of course everyone wants things to improve, but saying that they are NOT going to improve is just stating the obvious. I can't have false hope anymore like the rest of America, my "American Dream" has already crumbled right before my eyes, and while I am working my ass off to rebuild that dream, I am one of the lucky ones at this point. I still have a roof over my head and a car to drive and food to put on the table for my family. What happens when ONE TENTH of that TEN MILLION unemployed people completely run out of the essentials. What happens when one million people have been out of work for 3-5 years? They have to eat, they have to sleep. Where do they get their food and shelter? They will have no choice but to steal the basics in order to survive, unfortunately.  Only time will tell, but you read it here first.

Most of middle America is still struggling but has no idea what lower class America is going through. The dynamics has become "Survival Of The Fittest." People in Atlanta, Georgia are still doing far better than Flint, Michigan which is one of the biggest Ghost towns in America at this point with an unemployment rate higher than 26%. The town is desolate and basically worthless in value.  How can we possibly say that the recession is ending. I say it is just the beginning.