A Nation of Whiners

I just love all the flap stirred up by former Senator Phil Gramm's comments to the effect that the nation needs to stop whining about the economy. Right on Phil!! In the wake of the controversy over his comments, Gramm backtracked quickly to say he was speaking of the national leadership and not the average American. Since the average American is never quoted in the press, his clarification is accurate since by definition it is the pundits and politicians - i.e. those quoted in the media - that are doing all the whining.

In an earlier blog post (April 8, 2008) I made a similar statement that we as a nation have to stop whining and get on with creative solutions to the issues - economic, cultural and social - that we face. Unfortunately our political leadership in both parties seem unable and frankly unwilling to step up to the task. They would rather take cheap political shots at one another in the interest of control and power and most importantly re-election. Not that they ever do anything useful with power once they have it.

Specifically Gramm was referring to the state of the economy and all the focus of the media on recession, pain at the pump, yada yada yada. The facts are that while growth is slower than in recent years we are still growing and we are not - repeat not - in a recession or even close to one. In addition the media hardly ever reports on the good news such as a robust export led boom and the jobs that is bringing to the US economy.

Sadly this is to be expected since the media has a reflexive aversion to good news of any kind and loves to play up doom and gloom scenarios wherever and whenever possible. The classic example is the "Severe Weather" teams on all the local TV stations. These folks live for hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and any other form of meteorological catastrophe. What we see in the reporting on the economy is the "severe weather" effect. If it's not as bad as we would like let's just say it is and perhaps we can actually make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Clearly the politicians - particularly those in Washington DC and Democrats in general given their lust for the White House - exacerbate this concern at every opportunity.

Phil Gramm is right. We are a nation of whiners and we need to get over it.