On the anemic recovery since 2008 downturn, and the new normal...

I'm sure everyone has read quite enough about the anemic economic recovery since the 2008 downturn. I certainly have. My guess though is that most everyone doesn't need to read about it to know it; anyone who knows a wage/salaried job should know it by now.

There have been sporadic economic news about the increasing number of jobs being created, but unlike the past economic or the roaring days in the Bill Clinton years, these jobs are mostly low-wage, service jobs that can hardly support oneself, never mind the dream of moving up the economic ladder, starting a family, and join the "middle class" ranks.

Adding salt to the wound, is the fact that employers are resorting to once-off perks, rather than pay raises, I don't know about other sectors, but in IT, this is particularly true. In fact, I'm surprised that it takes main media and economists this long to figure it out because this trend, much like the outsourcing and offshoring that started in mid/late 1990s, has been going on for more than a decade now. I know it because I live it every year. While my employer has been making gobs of profits (and the senior management ranks have been amongst the highest compensated in the IT sector), a majority of folks have not seen a pay raise for more than 12 years, and counting.

And then there is the increasing wealth gap and income gap among the super-rich and the rest of the people, which looks to be a worldwide trend these days.

The trickle-down economics that GOP has always propositioned never work because for an economy to go roaring, it needs not just the super-rich buying yacht or sports cars or staying in resorts and fancy restaurants, what it really needs is the rest of the economy to have that capability to spend and consume as well. Bill Clinton has right general idea, rising tide lifts all boats.

Before the economy hits its snag, everyone was drunken on the easy money from Greenspan, coupled by the dismantling of regulations (like Glass-Steagall Act) and much weakened enforcement, so much so that even a dog could get any loan. No docs? No problem. Second or even third mortgage? We'll take care of that. Zero down? Why not. With all those, even a day laborer or unemployed could have finagled a mortgage to buy properties, turning the real estate market into a huge casino.

We know how that party ended in 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Suddenly everyone realized that they couldn't really afford the mortgage. They lost their jobs, their mortgage rate reset after the teaser rate ended, foreclosure ensued, and then it's someone else's fault for giving them a loan, any loan. Suddenly people claim they can't read fineprint, they could not have known or understood the terms, they don't know how to balance checkbooks. They MUST be helped. But this is a story for another day, and I'm not that ready for another sob story of how someone lost their house. What I want to look at, is the way forward.

But with these folks in the lower strata and even the great middle class losing their ability to spend because the easy money is not there anymore, and they are unable to borrow, the economy is unable to pull itself out quite so easily. For the first time ever, when the inflation is tampered by the collapsing oil prices, americans are pocketing the savings rather than spending the few extra hundred dollars. The harsh truth is that, americans have been funding their spending with borrowings. Greenspan was happy to oblige with near-zero interest rate, the chinese buy up gobs of US Treasury so that the interest rate can stay low. When americans continue to buy, the chinese are happy to sell (whatever that their factories can make).

So, where are we right now? Borrowings might be coming back, but only to those with good credit scores (presumably with a decent job and steady income), which excludes the low-income folks. Jobs are coming back, but with such low wages that some have to work 2-3 jobs to stay afloat. Having a college degree is no longer any sure bet, afterall college grads in US are competing with those elsewhere in the world, and college grads in China, India, and Eastern Europe are always ready to work for less. Globalization benefits big corporations but it's decidedly a two-edged sword for those toll their labor for a wage.

I don't need some economist to tell me why our economy is not roaring back because I've known it on gut level already. I don't need some main media talking heads to officiating this as our new normal because this has been with us for 6+ years now. I do feel bad for the younger generations, those who come of age finishing college right when the Great Recession hit, because they have been dealt a very bad hand.

But I'm not Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, with billions of dollars stand ready to change the world through philanthropy. I can only do the best I can on the personal level. To me, the silver lining of the Great Recession is more than golden because I've been able to buy up some choiced properties in great neighborhoods that I could otherwise never have been able to buy. I've saving up too (and I'm never a big spender anyways), so I don't have to worry retirement. In fact, I'm preparing for the day when I can call it quit at my job, and I won't have to worry about monthly income/expenses. Along the way, I'm starting my own business because I no longer have faith in a job - some job that works for someone else to put profit in their pockets.

Life is busy when one has to multi-task but it's better that than idling by. Given this anemic economy and this new normal, I count my blessings everyday.

On the rise of non-believers in God...

I read with interest a recent article in New York Times about the rise of non-believers in God particularly among the millennials. With the recent passing of my dad, it prompts me to do some soul-searching as well.

I was brought up in Catholic school, but most of the nuns turned me off, big time. There wasn't much preaching, but tons of praying and rituals, with masses and prayers all the time, all in keeping with the Catholic Church's teaching that we should just listen and do as we're told, and we're good to go. With the rebel in me, I grew away from Catholicism as I get older and away from the elementary/high school. It's not a place I relish anyways, what with all the very strict rules and no room for interpretation or questions. Deep down though, I do know that I've had some part in me that takes in the faith of a creator, some high-being that is the wise one, watching over us. 

None of my siblings nor myself who went to the same school was baptized, yet one by one, each of them turns to Christianity. In the end, even my parents have become the true faithfuls. My parents, in particular, enjoy the loving community built around their Christian church, and I'm happy that they find serenity in that. 

I was the only hold-out of the family, the last one awaiting baptism. As they get older, my parents' urging (for me to go to church, to bring my kids to church too, and to baptize) becomes more earnest. They want us all to reunite in heaven. As the preaching goes, if we don't get baptized, if we don't repent, we are condemned to hell, and would say goodbye to everyone in the family forever. Such are horrible thoughts for my parents. One of my dad's dying wishes was to see me baptized, for that same reason.

The death of my dad has left a big impact on me emotionally. It was the first true passing of someone I love since my grandma's death, but I was too young then to comprehend. Everyone in the church has been wonderful in helping (with the funeral and everything), and most of them feel like genuinely good people. So this is thus a rather strange feeling to me that I've since lost patience in all the preaching, hence the soul-searching. 

In a way, I don't concern as much about the eternal hell. Maybe over the years, I've come to embrace secularism without even fully aware of it. I've come to dislike all forms of organized religions, never mind what the religion actually is, all of which does nothing more than imposing the wills on the people, and should you disobey, well you know where you'll go when you die (voila, eternal burning hell). It's all the same with Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Catholicism, to name a few of the biggest mainstream culprits.

Is this such a God that is so vengeful that anyone, however good and decent in heart, will be condemned to hell, just because they would not say "I love you" to this God? Where had my dad gone after his death? Does anyone really know he's in heaven now? Yes, it's an act of faith for those who firmly believe that he is. For me who is still mourning for his death, I can't feel it, I don't feel it. I just know he's gone. For what's worth, he's gone with his last breath of life. 

I heard it somewhere that "whatever helps you sleep better at night", you'll buy it. Right about this moment, that's how I feel about organized religion and all the preaching and urging from my family, that I need to repent, that I need to baptize ASAP before some true hell strikes me, that when there's good fortune it's God's blessing, that when there's hardship it's God's tests on our faith. 

But is it really? Or, is it just some good luck, bad luck? And that when we die, we die, and there's that. 

All these, is not to say that having loving and caring community and familial support is not a nice thing, because it is. But I simply can't take it or feel it anymore. Right about now, I feel drifting away from the increasing piety of my family. I'm supposed to feel bad about it, but somehow I don't feel it. 

Maybe tomorrow I'll die of some unknown cause, and the world will not miss a beat, whatever good (or bad) I'm done. It'll just move on, the earth will continue to revolve around the Sun until maybe some million years later when the Sun implodes, taking with it the earth and all the planets around it. That is, if humans won't self-implode and destroy the planet earth sooner than that. Along the way, people would continue to preach apocalypse, and the end of the world, and Jesus will come again.

Right about now, my family tells me I should be running scared, but I don't feel it. Maybe I'm not blessed that way, but I don't really care. Or, is it another way to say, to hell with it? You tell me.