Brother Can You Spare a Dime?
Missed a posting last week as I was on the left coast where there was even more evidence of how miserable this recession is. Governor Terminator is threatening to issue IOUs to creditors and even to those due tax refunds. Housing has crashed, and the "single-family home" is becoming an endangered species. But besides the obvious unemployment, Chapter Elevens, foreclosures, stock crashes, and the rest, it is amazing how everyone is trying to bleed us for every penny. The airlines, after gouging ticket prices (over $600 each- did anybody notice that fuel prices are less than 30% of their peak?), charge $17 per piece of luggage (each way) and then have the audacity to charge two dollars for a bottle of water on a cross-country red-eye. Legoland (the worst value ever for anyone over four years old, by the way), after charging $10 for parking (or was it 12?) and $62 a head for a third-class Disneyland, then charges multiples of fair value for food, $5 for carnival games that can't be won (not even a chintzy "thanks for playing" prize for the little kids), super-premium gift-shop prices, etc. Even the gas stations charge extra for credit cards. It used to be that paying cash might get you a discount, but when I put my credit card in a pump in la-la-land, a "Do you approve the 45 cent processing fee?" message popped up. The crazy price increases in a recession are irritating enough, but the constant nickel and diming (or five and ten dollaring) is ridiculous. At least energy prices are down as OPEC realized that lowering prices was the only way to defuse the clamor for alternative energy. The rescue packages are helping some, despite their aweful administration (would have been nice to have that wasted Iraq war money, huh?), but where will this printing money policy lead us? And by the way, wait till we see what's under the consumer credit rock...
posted by Dead Man Blogging at
11:45 PM
2 Comments:
When the star of Commando is running a state it's probably best not to think about the economy and more to start thinking about who slipped you the brown acid.
While we're taking shots at Governor John Matrix, I had a good laugh at his expense for something that hit a little close to home for me, since I'm currently employed as a COBOL programmer- a couple months back he decided in order to help the state budget survive the fiscal year, he was going to have 200,000 state workers be issued minimum wage checks.
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/1132588.html
In order to do this, the COBOL computer programs used by the state needed to be updated. To ensure that irony is still alive, Schwarzenegger laid off a bunch of COBOL programmers working for the state. Oops.
COBOL is also a terribly old programming language- to put it in perspective, I don't think anyone who trained me on COBOL was under the age of 60. Dr. Crist Costa was using COBOL when my parents were younger than I am now.
As a result COBOL programmers are going the way of the dinosaur and are difficult to find, but COBOL is still largely ingrained in many systems today. The Y2K scare, for example, was primarily caused by a memory saving trick that COBOL programmers used back in the 60's and 70's that still lingered in programs used to this day.
So not only did he lay off the people who were critical to carrying out his minimum wage plan, he was pretty much forced to hire them back because there was no way to replace them with anyone else- the language might as well be Latin or ancient Sanskrit.
Is it really any wonder our country is in the state it is when our most prolific leaders for the last decade have had the foresight of a goldfish? With any luck this recession and new executive branch will influence a shift in ideology from red meat posturing to something with a little more thought, but my hopes aren't that high- we all know how Jimmy Carter's appeals to sensible spending and personal responsibility turned out thirty years ago.
Yes, I remember James Earl well. Love the Cobol-ers firings story. Foresight of a goldfish- what a riot!
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home