Economy and Traffic
Have you ever been stuck in traffic, hopelessly mired in a sea of cars? Time drags on and you dream of getting onto the open road again.
In an instance, an opening appears, and you gun it, pursuing that hole in traffic. As you drive on, it’s like the Red Sea has parted before you and you’re flying down the road. Well, you and all of the other cars who have shared this good fortune. In the back of your mind, you think, “It’s about time. I’m so glad the traffic has ended.”
In your fervor for the open road, you have inadvertently been a bit too aggressive and you’re speed is now approaching 90 mph. It’s all okay, that is, until you cross another hill and see the same sea of red lights in front of you. You have sped up to return to the fog of cars. You’re in traffic again.
It seems to be human tendency to exploit the opportunities in front of you. We go fast as a response to going slow. We eat too much after not eating for a while. We gorge ourselves on things at Christmas time. We endure periods of tight finances while working to have more money. Then we blow it all as soon as we can.
So it seems to be with the economy. When things start to turn up, corporations increase spending exponentially. And like so many of us in traffic, we find that companies and individuals spend so much that they push themselves back to the brink of poverty.
Consider the sub-prime mortgage industry. Corporations wanted to make money on marginal loans with high interest rates, while our neighbors all wanted to keep up with the Joneses. Consumers continued to buy and failed to save, acting in steroid-like rage, commercially speaking. And now we’ve run ourselves back up against the wall of reality, finding that excessive spending over the past 5 years does indeed have real consequences in life.
In the end, when you start to catch back up to the traffic on your way home, consider, “Am I catching up with the traffic in other areas of my life? Am I spending at a non-maintainable rate? Am I exploiting people? Am I looking to make marginal deals for the sake of short-term prosperity?”
I think we won’t like the answers to those questions.