Three Predictions
Two of them are good.
I believe that the mere fact that we elected a black man will help this country, even if his presidential skills and policies are nothing special. One reason is that fewer people will shoot at us. It is a lot harder to shoot at, or support those who shoot at, nice people. And to foreigners, it has now become harder to deny that that is who we are. I could have phrased my thoughts about this in a way that would be harder for a six your old to understand. But I see no reason to do that.
Six year olds should also understand that black people and other goups are especially anxious to prove that the American people did not make a mistake in electing who they did. So they will work harder, become smarter, and be nicer than they might otherwise have.That will eventually help all of us.
The bad prediction is the other side of the coin to my previous blog entry “It Ain’t That Bad”. The economy has an odd problem that I don’t think will go away. Which is that less expensive stuff has become awfully good. The four year old Honda. The seven dollar bath towel. The hundred dollar TV or Ipod. When you spend twice as much, you get perhaps ten percent better quality. In the old days people spent this extra money partially because they could afford it and partially because they had not used the cheaper stuff in years and didn’t know of their improvements. But now that they do, many will feel foolish wasting all that money for such small incremental benefits. In other word even after the economy stabilizes, I don’t think the upper middle class will go back to their old spending ways. Tiffanys and Wynn might still be OK. Along with Walmart. But I don’t hold out too much hope for Dilliards and the Riviera.