Lean times ahead?

The other day I was watching a movie based on the life of famous depression-era folksinger Woody Guthrie. One of the things that stood out the most to me about the movie was its stark depiction of how harsh life was for many Americans during the Great Depression.

Those of us who did not live through that trying time can scarcely appreciate just how bad things were, but seeing the fear and desperation depicted so vividly on screen did make a lasting impression on me.

Imagine losing your job and having no prospects for finding another one. Imagine losing your home and being forced to live in your car, which is a tight fit seeing as how it also contains all your worldly possessions. Imagine losing all your savings as well, and not having enough money in your pocket to even feed your family.

All of that and more happened to people just like you and me 70 years ago, right here in America. Our economy has had its share of ups and downs since then, but we haven’t come close to experiencing that sort of catastrophe again. Yet.

Right now we appear to be on the leading edge of a nasty recession. The cost of many basic necessities, including food and gasoline, has been skyrocketing. Unemployment is on the rise. People caught up in questionable mortgage deals are losing their homes, and the banks that sponsored those deals are not in the best shape either.

All of which may lead the average citizen to wonder – just how bad could all of this get? Is there a chance that we could be heading for another depression?

The honest answer is that no one knows for sure. Economic systems are closely tied to human behavior, and we all know that there is no sure way to predict that with any confidence.

However, most economists believe that another Great Depression is unlikely because of lessons learned during the last one. Back then, the Federal Reserve actually made a bad situation much worse by raising interest rates and tightening the money supply. Today the Fed’s playbook calls for a much different response to economic downturns.

So far it seems to have worked. But of course, there is no guarantee that they will be able to keep our chestnuts out of the fire forever.

There are reasons to be concerned. Near the top of that worry list, according to many economists, is our massive budget deficit and the ticking time bombs of Social Security and Medicare, set to blow up in our faces as the Baby Boom generation enters retirement.

We have no precedent for dealing with the financial situation that lies before us. How will a government that is already awash in such a financial crisis deal with the natural down cycles of our economy, like the one we are experiencing now? Will they be able to deal with them at all, or will we tumble helplessly into another depression?

Again, no one knows. But wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to find out? Wouldn’t it be nice if we faced up to the greatest threat to our future economic prosperity before we fly over that cliff?

Yes, it would be nice, but it doesn’t seem likely to happen. We are much too busy spending money that we don’t have. We have open-ended wars to fight, natural disasters to recover from, and so many worthy projects in so many congressional districts that absolutely must be funded.

We are heading into uncharted territory, and the road ahead looks pretty ominous. This might be a good time to sit down with an old-timer and get some pointers on how to survive the lean times. It’s a skill few of us are proficient in, but it may be coming back into style.

Is Bill Gates is going to hell?

It was widely reported this week that the Catholic Church has updated the well-known list of the Seven Deadly Sins to include seven brand new sins that are especially relevant to the modern world. As we have advanced our understanding of science and technology we have also, apparently, advanced our capacity to offend the Lord, and the Church decided it was time that they made us aware of that fact.

Now before you get excited and go do something crazy, please note that these are additions to the original list and not replacements, so the long standing cautions against lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, anger, envy, and pride are still in effect. But we must now also be on guard against the sins of dealing or abusing drugs, despoiling the environment, fiddling with human DNA, abortion, social injustice that results in poverty, “excessive” accumulation of wealth, and (this one is especially poignant considering the source of this list) pedophilia.

So we can see that the souls of people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and even (gasp!) Oprah may be in peril unless they immediately divest themselves of most of their outrageous fortunes. And those of us who haven’t yet embraced hybrid cars and compact fluorescent light bulbs might be feeling our seats getting a little warm as well.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t mean to make light of the subject of sin. I’m just not sure that anyone here on earth, even the learned men who inhabit the Vatican, can be trusted as authorities on which of our activities God may be most displeased with.

Would the Lord judge spending a great deal of money on an environmentally unfriendly SUV to be a worse sin than smacking your wife around, for instance? The above list might suggest that to the case, but I have my doubts. Morality is a complex subject, and it is generally folly to generalize too much about such things.

Still, there is no denying that the Catholic Church is a big voice on the world stage and it is not surprising that their listing of the Seven New Deadly Sins was big news. But I think the list is lacking something. What it needs to be truly memorable is an associated list of specialized eternal punishments customized to fit each sin, as the original Seven Deadlies had.

For those of you who don’t keep abreast of such things, the punishments for the original seven were:

- Greed – cooked in boiling oil

- Anger – live dismemberment

- Sloth – thrown into a snake pit

- Pride – body broken on a wheel

- Envy – dunked in freezing water

- Gluttony – force fed rats, toads, and snakes

- Lust – smothered by fire and brimstone

The sins really come alive when they are associated with a specific, horrific consequence, don’t they? The new sins need a similar list of awful consequences to drive home the point each is trying to make. Here are my suggestions.

- Drug dealing and abuse - the bad news: you have the worst incurable headache imaginable, the worse news: only one bottle of aspirin to last for all eternity

- Harming the environment – pick up trash on the roadside of a never ending highway, enduring taunts and beer bottles tossed at you by passing motorists

- Causing poverty – your job for all eternity is to restring angels’ harps for a few pennies a day, and they go through a LOT of strings

- Abortion – locked in a room with rabid Pro Life and Pro Choice advocates, can’t leave until you broker a political compromise

- Pedophilia – serenaded by Barney the Dinosaur, forever

- Genetic manipulation – spin the Wheel of DNA, be tormented for eternity by whatever monstrosity the random mutation produces

- Excessive wealth – forced to be Oprah’s lowest level lackey in paradise (O gets a pass because of all her charitable work, Dr. Phil not so lucky)