A lot of people (me included) have never really worked through a proper recession. I was in gainful employment during the dot.com crash a few years ago but that just really irritated people that thought the facebooks of their day were worth billions of times their annual earnings, which was silly to start with. The last proper recession before that was the early nineties when I'm guessing most of my readership were still at school/university.
So obviously people don't really understand what a recession is about, they seem to be going about their business in much the same old fashion. I've deduced this from the fact that I see an inordinate number of under 30's strolling around in the morning clutching their latte or mocho-choco-cappa-latte-doo-ron-ron's from Starbucks or Costa or wherever.
Part of me wants to scream at them, "Two and a half million people are unemployed, 21,000 people lost their jobs last month and the 2nd big round of lay offs is expected soon. Stop drinking your sodding coffees, put the 3 quid a stryroform cup of coffee costs you in a jar and prepare for the worst."
The part of me that is forever England wins out though, and I just sneer internally at them for their shortsightedness.
Well, at least the coffee shop people will keep their jobs. Not spending money would make matters worse, I guess.
ReplyDeletein most cases I really rather save the money... which does not go with the mentality an ex-cafe-owner should have... but hey... that's beside the point...
ReplyDeletethe other part of me tells me: the recession is only in your mind... and in the mind of a lot of people... and THAT is why we go into a global recession...
nothing we can do about it unless we can either control people's minds or eliminate money from the face of the earth...
can;t see any of the 2 happening soon tho... :)
well, it's unlikely but not impossible that we could have a world without money. Just imagine it.
ReplyDeleteI'm too stingy at the best of times for 3 quid coffee or pint. While I agree that the recession in the mind may make things worse, it shouldn't go unnoticed that even at the height of the economy lots of people were on poorly paid jobs, unemployed and poor. So even when things were going really well, we were happy to ignore those who are worse off. And drink our lattes. I'm not worried for the latte drinkers. I'm worried for those who can't afford lattes and how we justify spending 3 quid (which pays for a day's food for one person) on a silly coffee.