Half-empty or half-full (2008 in review)

[bigmacbear]

Last night I posted a comment on ciddyguy's journal regarding all the "good riddance to 2008" messages winging their way around LJ these days. He's of the opinion that he did OK in 2008 and wonders why those not directly affected by the crap economy are so down on last year in their journals. I thought I'd expand on my comment here and see what others think.

I suggested that people are scared shitless they are going to lose their jobs, whether or not those fears are well-founded. The truth is, the unemployment figure is only expected to reach 8% nationwide, which is alarming to those who study such things, but the odds of one who is currently employed being out of work (absent the obvious warning signs such as working for WaMu or a construction firm) are not as great as they seem. The real kicker is that once one is unemployed in this job market, they tend to stay unemployed. And that is scary.

But the media have been screaming their bloody fool heads off about it since the summer, which doesn't help matters. It wouldn't surprise me to find that is almost as much to blame for the timing of the current economic downturn as its root causes, namely greedy CEO's, rapacious oil companies, and financial wizards predicating the entire world economy upon thinly disguised Ponzi schemes, like collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, under the noses of regulators.

News folks make money by grabbing people's attention, and usually scaring people or making them angry does that quite nicely. This is sad, in my opinion; on a slow news day, I'd almost rather see a bright child being rewarded or a cuddly puppy needing adoption than a manufactured rehash of the same scary statistics. But local, human-interest stories require local reporters, who don't make the news organizations money.

That's not to say I'm not worried about my own finances. As my regular readers know, gmjambear and I bought a house this fall, right around the time the economy began an obvious spiral into the toilet drain. We chose a home in Everett precisely because we could get a better property at a price that is affordable on my income alone. So we have been looking at cutting expenses in small ways like packing lunches and deferring some of our travel (and we do love to travel) until some of this wrings itself out.

But if I lose my job, I at least have my savings and my (admittedly much diminished) investments to fall back upon. Not a whole lot of people can say that nowadays. Since most Americans have effectively no savings, and (unlike those in most other civilized countries) most Americans with medical coverage are dependent on their employers for it, job loss really does have rather dire consequences for most folks; indeed, some alarming percentage of Americans are one paycheck away from homelessness -- which is especially true in a high-cost city such as Seattle.

And in other news, at least a few of my LJ friends have been through emotionally draining experiences in 2008 that have nothing to do with the economy (breakups, loss of family members, illnesses, etc.)

So all in all, I think we've done well in spite of the financial turmoil of the latter portion of 2008, but I also think people have every right to kvetch when they haven't done as well.

Comments

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

but I also think people have every right to kvetch when they haven't done as well. I would agree with that for there are those who are not doing OK but it also seems to be a case of it's the thing to kvetch about the year even if you aren't affected by it too much.

But what you are also saying is indeed true and I hear stuff via NPR most days on the economy and on the other hand, so many got themselves into this mess to begin with by buying cars, houses that they could not afford, living on credit instead of their actual incomes and all that but in the end, as your title so aptly puts it, it really depends whether you see the glass as half empty or half full and I just prefer to see it as half full if at all possible for in the end, no matter how bad the year is, there are always good things that come out of it.

And yes, I also know it's not all about the economy and all that but as you so aptly point out, family, health, death etc issues that have nothing to do with economic mess we are all in, in one way or another.

[bukephalus.livejournal.com]

I agree that the media are playing a disproportionate role in the bad economy. This is largely a consumer-based recession at this point, and who is scaring the consumers into not spending? Clearly it's the drumbeat of superlatives from the media.