Thoughts

The news reports are getting worse and worse. They say more people are losing their homes, many people are losing their jobs, businesses are failing and lots more. The news is continually bad. The stock market is pretty far down.

Oddly, I'm not seeing much more of any of this here than I have ever seen. The only thing that is different is that our retirement account lost value along with everybody else. It will come back up in time. People have cut back on their spending and the stores and roads are less crowded, but not so much.

Congress has just passed an economic stimulus bill quickly, that is over 1,000 pages long we are told, and almost none of our congressmen read the thing before voting on it. I wonder what it contains, especially the little hidden surprises? Politicians always include hidden surprises. I think they call them pork.

Being frugal is good no matter what the economy but I wonder if all the doom and gloom are really coming or if it is mostly hype and political posturing. Fear sells newspapers and air time. The American people are very resilient and smart and wind up solving about any problem that comes along.

I am fascinated with the 1,000 gardens project. Larger communities are encouraging citizens to add 1,000 or more new gardens in their communities. I'll have to say it will be healthier if more people eat fresh produce and that would be a good thing.

There is a lot more dishonesty and greed than it seems like there was in the past, but maybe it seems that way because it is making the news more.

As we were out driving the other day, we passed by rows of storage buildings, the kind that people rent to put stuff in. Our homes are full of stuff, our garages are so full of stuff we can't park the car in them, our basements are full of stuff and we still have so much stuff we have to rent storage buildings to store it all. And what are the experts telling us to do to get the economy going better? Buy more! Where are we going to put it and do we really need that much stuff? It seems a bit crazy to me.