Good news America!

This is going to be a post that a lot of my myriad readers will differ with. Maybe even take offense to. Don't worry, it's not bad news. It's good news!

I live in Korea and STILL I'm constantly hearing about the American "recession." Some people have even had the nerve to label it a "depression" already. You know how much time I spend in sorrow for America? None. In fact the panic stricken new anchors using scarily diving charts and graphs and proporting doom and gloom are just a beautiful illustration of exactly why the "recession" is good for America.

Let me splain. There's this new thing called globalization. Maybe you've heard of it. It's unstoppable. It's going to continue. With technology allowing other countries around the world to share all markets it's going to be good for just about everybody. American businesspeople already know that when you go to a foreign country you can give jobs to citizens and make them very happy. Jobs that pay them a tiny fraction of what you have to pay Americans. You COULD, (but come on, chuckle snicker why would you?), even lower the price of your product so it sells even BETTER. THIS part of globalization is quite familiar to America. For years they've been doing this and for years profits have increased by a fairly steady percentage every year.

But now, other countries are doing this. And other countries ARE pricing their products lower. They are becoming more competitive so that the regular increases in American business are harder to maintain. Companies in rich countries are vigourously searching for poorer and poorer countries to exploit- um, er, I mean give the privelege of building factories in. But there are only so many countries on the earth. It eventually had to happen: soon even American companies will be forced to charge more reasonable prices for their goods because they are only increasing their profits at maybe half the usual rate. The panic-stricken news reporters are trained to call this "loss" for companies. And when many companies report these "losses" it's called a "recession." It makes it easier for CEO's and people at the top of American companies to ease the "losses" by "downsizing", devaluing stock and things like that and at the same time maintaining a steady increase in THEIR standards of living while their companies have fallen on hard times. This is how so many "downturns" and "fiscal hardships" and things like that are happening yet companies are still managing to stay afloat. The companies you see going tits up are the ones that just refuse to charge reasonable rates for their products or take pay cuts. They'd rather go out of business, which can actually be more profitable for them.

This is hugely oversimplified but what it boils down to is what Americans have spent their entire existence training their citizens NOT to do: share. The world is now sharing. How many years has America made a gozillion bucks more than any other country? It seems the businesspeople of America, (and, yes other rich countries too including Canada), somehow expected that the money to even economies out around the world was going to come from somewhere else. And let's not overstate the case. It's going to be a VERY long time before things are even.

The countries that have been cheap labour for the rich countries have learned how to make stuff, saved their meagre salaries and now are producing goods themselves. But they are poor countries. They don't need to charge the outrageous prices that rich countries like America does for the same products. So everybody stops buying from the rich countries and buys from the poor. I think this is great! It's awesome how not everything is made in China or Taiwan or Japan or America any more. It's fun to look at the tags on things now to see where they're made.

Now here's the good news. I'm sure, like me, you've seen all the poles and studies that show how happy various countries around the world are. It's always the poor countries who are at the top and the rich are at the bottom. Well I've also seen first hand how happy people are in their poverty. And there's no end to the evidence of how miserable Americans are! Half the country is on one anti-depressant or another. Do you think it might have something to do with all these people joining the ratrace, or in American terms, "chasing the American dream," working long hours under highly stressful conditions trying to keep up with the Joneses and support their families rather than raise them?

Americans must buy their children rooms full of toys, pay for lessons in sports, music, martial arts, dancing etc. to keep them entertained while the majority of the world has their kids at home with them. And they have time to spend with them, cuz they aren't working 80-hour weeks. Or sometimes they just tell their kids to quit whining about being bored and get the hell outside. Where they develop socially, use their imaginations, and learn life lessons while playing with the other "poor" kids. Maybe this can partly explain why even the KIDS in America are depressed!

I was watching the first episode of the new Apprentice show. It's a "recession" Apprentice in which every contestant had some job making multi-million dollar business deals and now they're on unemployment or working a regular job like driving a bus or something. They're failures! They just can't support their families any more on mere hundreds of thousands a year. Woe, woe, woe to the American recession victims! Please!

Take it as good news, America. As your economy gets "destroyed" and you are forced to sell the yacht and maybe the fourth car or second house, you'll be all the happier for it. And maybe your kids will too! Unemployment is relaxing. Working part time frees up a lot of schedule slots to spend with family. THEN maybe, just maybe, you'll realize that all these scare tactics like having news reporters tell you how dire the economy is, how evil socialism is, how important it is to be a good "provider," and the list could go on and on, were all just mind massage to keep you productive, if clinically depressed citizens. And let countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Costa Rica share some of the sorrow that comes with riches. It's all part of the SHARING of globalization.

Or maybe not. I dunno.