Rocky: Hey, Bullwinkle, we’re in real trouble now!
Bullwinkle: Oh good, Rocky, I hate the artificial kind.
It’s 7 a.m. and it’s still dark outside. Why is it still dark outside? Because we all agreed, despite the position of the sun, to say it is 7 a.m. Nature, and our bodies, know it isn’t really 7 o’clock in the morning, but what nature doesn’t consider is that human beings like to conceptualize. We know time is just a concept and as such, is pliable. We understand it’s a concept because, well, we thought it up to begin with. It’s 7:00 in the morning because we say it is.
Now, time isn’t the only abstract concept that we deal with. The economy is a concept, an algebraic thought process, a completely made-up system that can be tweaked and toyed with by human beings enamored of such things. One day the interest rate is 4%, the next day it’s 3.9%. Why? Because The Fed said so. One day gas is $2.78 a gallon, an hour later the same gas in the same underground tank at the same gas station is $2.29 a gallon. One day, the house you bought for $90,000 is valued at $300,000…the next day it’s worth $225,000. Nothing changed except the “concept” of monetary value. You can’t tell me that a hog’s future is any better today than it was yesterday, that hog is going to end up in a sandwich regardless of the value we put on his future.
Let’s all decide to fix our country’s economic woes. Let’s all agree that the “crisis” is over. There. Done. Now, can we go back to bed?
Phil “Philbert” Fountain is an economic strategist and Saturday morning cartoon aficionado. He currently has several ideas on how to run Redding right into the ground, thus increasing the unreal estate value of his personal holdings.
