Frank J. Fleming
Our country has faced many problems and gone through many changes, but finally Americans have come together and said, Yes! Right here — this is exactly where we want America.
At least, that’s what the recent election tells us — the American people resoundingly said, “Don’t change a thing.”
They chose Barack Obama as president to propose bold, new ideas to control the economy, a Republican House to stop most of that, and a Democratic Senate to refrain from passing one of those pesky, restrictive budgets.
Yes, it’s a surprise that this is precisely what we want as a nation. You’d think the ideal America would be a bit different from what we see now. One with lower unemployment, for example.
AP
Boehner: Back to battle with re-elected Obama.
It turns out, though, that a lot of people don’t even like having jobs. Really, if jobs are as great as everybody claims, then why do they have to pay us to do them? So around 8 percent unemployment is exactly perfect for us. Any more employment, and we’d be constantly inundated with obnoxious help-wanted ads urging us to work, when for a lot of us, that’s just not our thing.
And you might assume we’d want our economy to grow at a faster rate than it is now, but apparently between 1 percent and 2 percent is absolutely perfect. Why is everyone in a huge rush to grow the economy anyway? It will get there when it gets there.
And thanks to compounding interest, as long as we keep this rate of growth (which is a really low bar to aim for), the economy is going to be huge years down the road. Like a thousand years from now, wow, what a giant economy we’ll have.
Yes, the debt will be the second largest object in the solar system by then, but we’ll also have much more practice ignoring it.
High gas prices? Well, they sure make us more, well, contemplative about and appreciative of gas. We used to just drive whenever and wherever we wanted without much thought, but now we know a tank of gas is a precious thing that must be used sparingly. And, anyway, that’s mainly an issue only for people who have jobs to go to, so not that many.
And aren’t things in the Middle East great right now? Osama bin Laden is dead, and nothing happens there, besides an occasional consulate getting overrun. But I hear that’s because of YouTube videos, so it’s really more Google’s problem.
So everything is perfect right now. Yes, we face a few problems down the road, like that “fiscal cliff,” but if we all work together, we can give that can a nice, big kick and send it sailing into the future to be someone else’s problem.
Anyway, we shouldn’t worry about it, because in this perfect America, we’re not really into problem solving right now. We’re in more of our “backpacking through Europe after college” phase. We just won’t worry about the big things and will instead take some time off to find ourselves. We can start tackling those problems . . . later. Whenever the can-kicking thing stops working.
So let’s all just enjoy this utopian America we’ve found, for as long as it lasts. It’s the new Camelot, and we’ll one day tell our kids about it . . . and they’ll be pretty curious, since they’ll get the bill and wonder where that all came from.
Political satirist Frank J. Fleming’s new e-book is “How To Fix Everything in America Forever.”
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So the voters think this is paradise
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So the voters think this is paradise
