Living in a Condom Nation

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“What do guns, burglar alarms, and condoms have in common? Their sales all boomed in 2009, with condom sales jumping 22% over the same period in 2008. But why?... When you are told repeatedly that the world is buckling under the weight of a financial crisis, the first line of defense is to save whatever money you have. That sets a whole new train in motion. Suddenly your local retailer around the corner loses revenue from your less-frequent visits. They are forced to lay off staff, who in turn are spending less, and in fact are no longer buying your products. It becomes a cycle somewhat akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy. We're told it's a crisis. We stop spending. They stop spending. Everyone from producer to retailer suffers. And the economic meltdown keeps on melting.

“As sophisticated as we have come to believe we are, we need to remind ourselves that we're not that far from our evolutionary relatives--primates who live our lives taking care of the most basic needs--food, sex, sleep, and survival. In an atmosphere of fear, we tend to revert back to our basic needs, and this may explain why we're stocking up on condoms, buying weapons, and installing burglar alarms… A recent neuroscience study shows that fear is a far bigger driver than we would ever care to admit. Fear of losing our job, fear of not being able to make the kids' school payments, fear of ending up in the proverbial gutter. These thoughts are scary enough to bring on an instant anxiety attack. When we're operating in survival mode, fear and sex become our two main drivers.” FastCopmpany.com, April 19^th. Some folks call this the “consumer confidence” index; I call it common sense.

Economists tell us that employment is a “trailing economic indicator,” polite for last in line, presumably because the last push of the economic cliff we call the great recession was laying-off folks by the millions – well over 7.7 million if you want the shocking number. We are about to experience the joy – just as employment seems to be improving – of federal, state and local job cuts to meet demands to reduce the deficit. I’ve blogged this one way too much already. But wait, there’s more.

So try this little note contained in the Aril 19^th LBNelert: “U.S. multinational corporations employ one-fifth of the American work force, but they would apparently prefer to have the work done overseas: They cut their U.S. employment rosters by 2.9 million in the 2000s, while boosting overseas employment by 2.4 million jobs. That’s a big turnaround from the 1990s, when they added 4.4 million jobs at home and 2.7 million jobs overseas. ‘It’s definitely something to worry about,’ says Matthew Slaughter, a former economic adviser to President Bush.”

The reasons are many. Educational standards are rising overseas just as they are falling here, and since many emerging nations have pay levels way beneath ours, it just makes sense to take those jobs overseas. Additionally, because we have one of the most screwed up tax structures in the developed world and since big corporations don’t have to pay taxes on properly structured foreign earnings as long as they don’t bring that money back to the U.S., they don’t. Instead, they use that money to build shareholder value by hiring folks overseas with that untaxed money. They pay effect rates on earnings under 10% in many cases, and that 35% corporate tax rate is nothing more than a paper tiger for the corporately stupid… or small businesses.

So Americans are scared, willing to accept a momentary “little luxury” like an expensive chocolate or a “plush” staycation in lieu of real travel. They are dealmakers, seekers of bargains, internet price-comparison-gurus and trying to figure out life at a survival level. But our government isn’t investing in training her people with solid skills, we’re not building efficiency-enhancing infrastructure and we’re not sponsoring the next generation of technological research that we need to resume growth. If we believe in our future, let’s invest in our future. If Americans want to believe again, let’s give them a united political system to believe in.

I’m Peter Dekom, and our elected “leaders” are reactive, excuse-mongering, slogan-embracing snails that have forgotten why they were voted into office.