By David Magallanes/ Guest contributor
This is my first foray into anything remotely political. I know that writing political articles is like touching that third rail: I’m asking to be “fried.” That’s not a typo; I don’t think I’m going to get “fired” for writing politically, unless I go over the top. My musings don’t seem to have drawn any fire yet; in fact, they really haven’t drawn much of anything. I have no experience writing controversially (or at least I don’t think I’m too controversial), though if I felt strongly enough about a topic, I would write about it regardless. I admire those writers who don’t stick their toe into the political writers, like I’m doing, but rather dive in, head first, no protective wet suit, no goggles, no fear. Sheer chutzpah. Maybe even a touch of flamboyance.
However, this toe-in-the-water article isn’t about the current political or economic climate or about the sitting president. I’m not going there. This article, like most of mine, is about what I perceive as general underlying truths that aren’t always obvious or within the sphere of popularity.
An article titled “Poll: Slow recovery weakens Obama,” published June 23, 2011, in the Ventura County Star, caught my attention. A grandmother of three, Mary Perrine, from West Lafayette, Indiana, is quoted as saying, referring to President Obama, “I just think he’s not doing his job the way he should be” (p. 13A). The article mentioned that she, like millions of others in our country, has had to struggle to pay her bills.
Let me emphasize once more: I’m not here to criticize or defend President Obama. Substitute any former president’s name you want.
While I certainly sympathize with Ms. Perrine’s situation, I began to ask myself whether any other president, be he or she Republican or Democrat (or any other party for that matter), would make that much of a difference in Ms. Perrine’s life, or in any of our lives. Certainly, a president has the power to influence the economy, but he or she is not doing it alone. And it’s entirely possible that the market forces at work at any given time are much larger than whatever forces a president or Congress could conjure up from the fetid brew that sometimes swirls around in our global economic system.
Decisions made years — even decades — ago sometimes have the momentum of a flywheel that is not about to change its rotational speed anytime soon. Corporate greed, corruption, deception and government largesse seem to have had plenty of leverage in our personal economic lives these past few years, and most of us are still very much feeling the effects of demons that were released into the economy quite a few years ago. The demons have not yet been banished from our midst, and as long as they are thriving — or even still breathing — they will continue to wreak havoc in our personal economic lives. Every day I talk with people who are indeed suffering, to one degree or another, much as Ms. Perrine is suffering. Like many other professionals I know, I lost a raft of money, on paper and in real life, over the past few years. Poof. Gone. Just as I think we’re pulling the plane up into the air, its wheels once again touch ground and we never do quite seem to pull up and take flight.
It’s so easy to blame the president. Those opposed to a given president will all too gladly blame him or her for our economic woes. It fits their agenda perfectly. And if they can get others to believe this, then they score political points. It’s all about winning, whether the assertions they make are in fact true or not. Truth appears to be irrelevant when one is intent upon scoring points.
So whom or what do we blame? It’s not “popular,” and it scores no political points, to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask, “Why, really, am I in financial turmoil? Why am I struggling? What can I do — not someone else — to improve my financial outlook?”
The reason this line of questioning isn’t popular is because the burden gets placed on US <gasp!> to do something about our situation. It’s far too convenient to shirk that responsibility and hand it over to our president, our government, or a spouse. So many of us spend so much time doing so little about the big picture of our finances. And then we wonder why our financial lives not only don’t improve, but seem to get worse over time.
This is a big topic. I’m not even going to begin to suggest all the things we could do — and stop doing — to change our lives. It always involves work and planning — lots of planning. Too many of us plan our vacations better than we do our lives. Which makes for great vacations. But more than anything else, as I’ve mentioned in previous columns, the quality of our lives, including our sense of prosperity, begins with how we think. The problem is that we’re not trained in school to think in ways that could vastly improve our existence. Is there a reason for that?
I’m not going there, either. At least, not in this column.
— David Magallanes is the creator of his own enterprise, Real World Projects, a business primarily dedicated to building distribution outlets for highly reputable products that offer a healthier life and a more vibrant lifestyle. An emerging branch of Real World Projects is Edifiquemos, a Spanish language enterprise dedicated to teaching the Spanish-speaking how to create a profitable international (U.S./Mexico) enterprise with low investment and high earning potential. David may be available for speaking opportunities. To contact him and for more information, you are invited to visit and explore his web sites at www.realworldprojects.info and at www.edifiquemos.com