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| Watch any news show and you’ll likely want to abandon modern society, hole up in a cave out in Utah, and live your life searching for lizards so that you’ll never have to hear about bad securities or predatory lending ever again.
But eventually that fear will subside. Perhaps you had to go pick up a keg for tonight’s party and you’ll likely forget about your previously devolving intentions. However, while you may not remember explicitly what talking head one was saying, you will bring a sense of unease out of the show, a sense that maybe spending isn’t such a good idea. Well, I’m here to debunk that claim. Seriously. Go out and spend. Lots. Beer. Food. Clothes. Cars. Condoms. Make it a goal to spend every time you leave your house. Literally buy anything and everything you at what one point even conceived of purchasing. Inject some pure American materialism directly into your bloodstream and spend. Buy a fuckload of stuff. Why you might ask? Why should I go out and spend money in an economy when I don’t know if I’ll have a job tomorrow? The answer is pretty simple, because the economy will only turn around when people regain their confidence in it. If everyone decided to go out and spend $50 tomorrow, every person in America spares $50 then that would be a $15,000,000,000 stimulus package pumped right into our economy. $15 billion and all I had to do was buy one shirt from Buckle. To be fair, some people simply can’t afford to do spend $50 on anything, let alone an overpriced piece of cotton. But most college students can though. While we aren’t rich, we can afford to spare $50 here or there to help out. If, say, 20 million kids around college age spent $50 one day we could add $1,000,000,000 into the economy. A billion dollar stimulus package. It wouldn’t bring us out of the recession by any means but it would likely be enough to put some green triangles next to Nasdaq and Dow for a couple days. We are at a point when we can afford to spend. Most of us don’t have kids to take care of; most of us aren’t paying for our educations. We have the freedom to drop some money here or there, and, if done in mass, we have the ability to do some good. When Obama got elected “Yes We Can” rang around college campuses like it was the new fight song. At U of M conservatives were careful to stay inside on November 5th, fearful of the vengeful wrath an emboldened group of College Democrats could inflict. So, how about “Yes We Can Volume 2,” where all us college students buy beer, condoms, and overpriced clothing en mass. Sounds like a political event I actually want to be a part of. And, maybe, if enough kids join up we can make a difference. And not just a “difference” like every other save the baby seals club. But an actual difference. An extra billion dollars in one day won’t solve the crisis, but, maybe, just maybe, it helps to rebuild some confidence in our economy that every other media outlet except for TCM* seeks to destroy.
*I’m not sure if TCM qualifies as a legitimate news outlet, but last I checked we were more factual than Fox News. Suck it, Murdoch. |