Communication: Learning From the Past

If President Elect Obama has learned anything from studying the past he seems to have learned that the incentive to stimulate the economy must, arguably, start with jobs. After all, if consumers do not have jobs, they have no money and cannot support businesses. The big fear is that President Elect Obama's grand plans for a 'New Deal' type of job stimulus plan is not geared toward a quick fix. It is true that changes will happen slowly and the fact is there probably is no quick fix to an economy that has fallen so heavily into despair. Even in the past with the Great Depression the New Deal did not solve the problems of the economy, it only made it possible for millions of people to once again have hope—it allowed them to survive.

Survival is the key here. Getting through these troubled times without a total collapse of our way of life is the issue only this time it is not merely a U.S. problem it is global. Technology has linked every continent to the economic crisis in ways that while in good times is invigorating; in bad times it is catastrophic. Now more than ever in history the world as a whole has a stake in the well being of each and every nation's financial health.

Statistics show that a recession usually lasts about a year. We have gone beyond that time span and it is reasonable to assume this is not going to go away by itself. The economy is not going to right itself without a great deal of help and the plan proposed by President Elect Obama is at the very least a lofty goal that shows incentive and desire to provide relief to a scrambling nation. At its best over time it may just divert the scary inevitability of what a prolonged recession leads to—depression. The job stimulus plan attacks the problem at its core. Bailing out industry, shoring up banks, and other methods of salvaging a defunct economy are attempts to bandage the symptoms rather than fight the problem at its root.

Like the New Deal of the past the new stimulus programs are varied and widespread and do indeed include some aide to struggling corporations and banks. Like the New Deal of Roosevelt's time, however, it focuses on the people and getting the economy working again from the bottom up. Keeping people in their homes, putting food on their table, and giving them jobs so that they can stimulate the industrial world like no stimulus program possibly can is what worked in the past and will work again.

Right now it is hard for anyone to focus on anything other than fixing what is broke. Perhaps once things are working once more we can study our own recent past to see what errors were made to cause such critical failure. Certainly our rosy outlook on credit and spending are the crux of a problem that must not be allowed to happen again. It is common knowledge that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. It is time we stopped repeating this particular portion of history. Some day it may be impossible to keep it from becoming total annihilation.

For more information on the job stimulus plan, visit http://www.jobstimulusplan.com.

Communication: Learning From the Past
(Thu Jan 8th, 2009, by John Parks)