Money & Economic Collapse

Although the alternative press that I have been reading for the past few years predicted the economic collapse at least a year before it occurred, no one knew then how severe it would become. Economists and various other prognosticators predict that many more jobs will be lost in this country over the next twelve months. With the exception of the public schools, where school districts like Leavenworth have not been renewing the contracts of some of their teachers in the elementary and secondary schools, education is one of the few remaining careers with some degree of security. For so long as there are college students to teach, I can probably remain employed.

If I were to give advice to a young person leaving high school, I would recommend education and medicine as two careers with a future. There isn’t much else left in this country unless one has the money to go into business for oneself and even then one has to rely on those people with jobs, and with disposable income, for one’s livelihood.

I don’t know how much worse the economic woes affecting this country will become. Economists are stumped, too. One economist I saw quoted recently said, “It will get worse before it gets worse.” In other words, no one really knows what will happen. Without a manufacturing base and without a source of fuel that doesn’t have to be imported, this country may have to alter its entire economic system. Our consumer culture cannot continue when it is based almost entirely on credit.

When I was sick recently and relying on a year-old prescription of cough medicine to sleep through the night, I dreamt that aliens decided that we could no longer care for ourselves. Once they came to this planet, the first thing they did, besides crippling us by making us deaf, was stop our reliance on money. They initially made their presence known by sending messages across television screens and across windows. We were crippled physically so that we wouldn’t react in fear and attempt to fight back. In place of money, we were presented with the chance to devote our energy to bettering ourselves and given replicators to fulfill our immediate needs—i.e., food and clothing. While some of these ideas seem based on old episodes of Star Trek, I have to wonder whether the six billion people on this earth could ever stop worrying about having enough money. What would so many people do with themselves?