When Pigs Fly

A column by Supervisor Alex Gromack

 

It feels a lot better to think we are in control of things even if, deep down, we know we’re not.

 

Take the economy for example. Everyone has an opinion of what happened and everyone has a prediction about what will happen. You can get dizzy just trying to make sense out of any of it.

 

Now economists have never really had an easy time being accepted as legitimate scientists. In fact their ‘reliability’ rating has never quite made it to the level of meteorologist. Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are economists, or could be.

 

I think Art Buchwald, noted humorist and columnists said it best when he said, “An economist is a man who knows a hundred ways of making love but doesn’t know any women.” George Bernard Shaw’s “If all economists were laid end to end they would not reach a conclusion,” hits it from another angle.    

 

But enough bashing. It’s not the economists’ fault that the economy has gone south and all the finger pointing in the world won’t get our ‘money train’ back on the right track. We need to do something and considering how ineffective the more traditional methods have been, perhaps it is time for some ‘out of the box’ thinking.

 

Maybe what we need to kick start our economy is a good swift kick in the pants.

 

The little, by comparison, nation of Finland may just have found the right boots.

 

Current establishment thinking urges people to save during a recession. In fact there are ads running every day telling us that saving money is good, spending is evil.

 

One such ad campaign sponsored by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, a fun group by any measure, has the narrator saying

“When it comes to having money, don’t rely on luck. Brew your own coffee at home, instead of buying that latte. Brown bag it to work, instead of ordering in”.

 

In America, at least, the piggy bank has become the sacred cow of the recession.

 

The five million people in Finland are being exposed to quite a different advertising campaign openly supported by their government. Their ‘piggy bank’ is an evil creature with little devil ears.

 

According to the Finns, ‘If people don’t buy that coffee, the coffee place will have to let some workers go and probably won’t be able to pay the rent and then the landlord is in trouble and then…….”. The message is don’t save, spend. 

 

It’s always difficult to find the truth when you have two such different viewpoints. That saving is good is the ‘tried and tested’ approach. That spending is good is the unorthodox and bold approach.

 

I guess we could put a group of noted economist in a room, lock the door and tell them they can’t come out until they pick the right choice.

 

Then we’d settle the problem once and for all, or we could just wait until pigs fly.