Old economics lessons still relevant
Published on Thu, May 6, 2010 by John OwenRead More Owen at Large
Nobody ever accused me of being a mathematical genius and I blame this on my stutter-start to formal education. Which is to say that in my first five student years I attended six different elementary schools in five different communities.
But I could spell and the one word I could both write and comprehend was "depression."
During the Great Depression workers went where the jobs were. And there weren't enough to go around.
Sound familiar today?
I hope the same lesson has been learned, like the one taught in Forestry 101. "Money doesn't grow on trees."
Or the one preached in advanced Home Economics, "There is no free lunch."
Boy did we learn those lessons when I was a kid. Our financial adviser in that era was a cowboy twirling a lariat while reciting his personal slant on economics.
"Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need," Will Rogers explained.
Today he might have a problem justifying the expensive electronic toys filling the backpacks of American teenagers.
"When a dog gets a bone it doesn't go out and make a down payment on a bigger bone," Will Rogers explained. "He buries the one he's got."
And Will Rogers asked a question that was relevant during the great depression and equally pertinent today, when discussing a national financial crisis. "If stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out?"
It would be simplistic to describe the 1930s as an age of enlightenment.
Our reigning sex symbol was called Betty Boop.
We learned to read through elementary school Dick and Jane Books. ("See Dick run! Watch Jane skip the rope.")
We did a lot of running, a lot of skipping, we played hide and seek and kick the can. We played marbles and one-oh-cat baseball, we collected cancelled postage stamps, we listened on the radio to Jack Armstrong and The Shadow, we thought Spike Jones and his City Slickers elevated the art of washboard musicality to new levels of artistic genius.
Don't get me wrong. We were big spenders in the 1930s. But we were spending Monopoly dollars and learned early on that you don't buy Park Place when you only have two pink bills in reserve and aren't due to pass Go and collect $200 for at least two more rolls of the dice.
But I could spell and the one word I could both write and comprehend was "depression."
During the Great Depression workers went where the jobs were. And there weren't enough to go around.
Sound familiar today?
I hope the same lesson has been learned, like the one taught in Forestry 101. "Money doesn't grow on trees."
Or the one preached in advanced Home Economics, "There is no free lunch."
Boy did we learn those lessons when I was a kid. Our financial adviser in that era was a cowboy twirling a lariat while reciting his personal slant on economics.
"Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need," Will Rogers explained.
Today he might have a problem justifying the expensive electronic toys filling the backpacks of American teenagers.
"When a dog gets a bone it doesn't go out and make a down payment on a bigger bone," Will Rogers explained. "He buries the one he's got."
And Will Rogers asked a question that was relevant during the great depression and equally pertinent today, when discussing a national financial crisis. "If stupidity got us into this mess, why can't it get us out?"
It would be simplistic to describe the 1930s as an age of enlightenment.
Our reigning sex symbol was called Betty Boop.
We learned to read through elementary school Dick and Jane Books. ("See Dick run! Watch Jane skip the rope.")
We did a lot of running, a lot of skipping, we played hide and seek and kick the can. We played marbles and one-oh-cat baseball, we collected cancelled postage stamps, we listened on the radio to Jack Armstrong and The Shadow, we thought Spike Jones and his City Slickers elevated the art of washboard musicality to new levels of artistic genius.
Don't get me wrong. We were big spenders in the 1930s. But we were spending Monopoly dollars and learned early on that you don't buy Park Place when you only have two pink bills in reserve and aren't due to pass Go and collect $200 for at least two more rolls of the dice.