Thoughts on the State of the Union

This blog post summarizes my thoughts and feelings over the past several years that I never could fully articulate. Please read the following:

Why you should not go back into the market

I have to admit, I still have some monies invested in the stock market, but I’d like to pull those out; I just don’t think pulling them out is practical. Even though I rode out the post-dot-com bust without much concern (hey, investing is for the long-term, so have a long-term view, right?), I think Mr. Paterson has a real point in his blog about the state of the market today. Back in 2006, I mentioned to a few people that I thought we were heading for a crash. There’s just no way there could be as much money in the world as what was being tossed around the markets. I remember having a talk with a financial advisor at a family function that summer, and somehow we got started on that topic, and we talked for probably 2 hours about what was coming and when. People (alarmists then but perhaps now they’re more like prognosticators) were warning that we were headed for a crash on the scale of that in 1929, if not worse. And our current crisis is what we discussed, and it looks like the time is now.

I’m not all “It’s doomsday, get to the shelter with your bottled water and canned goods time,” (yet). Rather, I think we’ll make it through, but there will be lean years ahead, and that is one of the reasons I have always wanted to have my own mini-farm, because I’d like to have less dependence on the system overall and more independence, less of life on paper and more living off the actual land. Call it the pioneer spirit or call it flaky, but being (mostly) self-sufficient has always been a dream of mine.

Admittedly, I joke around a lot in general because I believe in taking a light-hearted approach to life and because I just enjoy having a good time. But I do get serious from time to time and I’m serious when I say that we have gotten off-track and now have so many things wrong in this country that I think it will take the better part of my remaining lifetime to get them straightened out. All of the major religions, particularly Christianity, urge us to take care of the sick and the poor, and more and more, we aren’t doing either. We (including me) leave it in someone else’s hands to fix, or expect people to pull themselves up when they’re down, but getting involved is too complicated (so many systems in place, no clear way through all the bureaucracy). I think we have a long way to go toward restoring the great nation we once were, but I also don’t lose sight of the fact that people are still willing to risk their lives every day, just for the chance to get into this country. Clearly we have much more good than bad, but I’d like to see the good get better and the bad get fixed. And by “better” I don’t mean “having more stuff,” I mean, “treating each other kindly and taking care of each other, even strangers we’ll never see again”.

To go out on a positive (if slightly tangential) note, people in my office just came back from the largest manufacturing trade show in North America, and all reports are that the manufacturing sector is actually in a boom right now. Part of that is based on the weak dollar, making American production cheaper than overseas production, and another part is the scramble to create products that are lighter and therefore less taxing on the environment as well as solutions for alternative energy production such as wind turbines, etc. So even in all the gloom and doom, there are positive spots on the horizon.