Incepted

Last night, I finally was able to see Inception. I already wanted to see it but after hearing all of the hype, I decided to check it out for myself. I will not review it here and try not to spoil it but I will say this about the movie. It seems like it can relate very well to extreme circumstances in this day in age. I talk, of course, about the financial meltdown. When a business is made in any form that is difficult for more than one person to follow, the end result will be very devastating. In the movie, the main character is the only who has performed an Inception while the others remain very skeptical and hesitant. Much like any cause of the financial meltdown (I will not specify as any particular part can be made worse the the others), few people actually understood what was sold to the masses.

 

So why, you ask, do I related these two. Only because, like Ariadne, understanding comes not from rushing into something thinking one can handle it but from taking a step back and bringing the idea to the forefront. The other example is when the Professor tells Cobb that he never taught him how to be a thief. Much like business school, acting based on facts is of utmost importance than actually making money or how costs are cut.

 

At this point, you’re saying, whoa you got all philosophical on me for a second. I say no. Think for a second about the number of times anyone has wanted to go for the next big score only to have it blow up in their face or the times anyone has said “You get what you pay for.” Responsibility will get what you want, like the movie, but the rewards will be that much more than was expected.

To Recover or Not To Recover

The jobs report was recently released and the U.S. is not doing quite as well as we had hoped. The numbers only looked good because census takers were recently employed but were also more recently let go. This basically left us in the same employment situation as before, but time does not stop for the census. People who have given up looking for work actually caused the numbers to change as well. The main flaw in our system for checking unemployment (which causes a small controversy every few years) is that it only counts those people actively looking for jobs and are unemployed. It does not count people who are unemployed and not looking for work and those who are employed and looking for another job.

Some have asked, well why not just add these figures into the unemployment figure. This is a great idea more in theory than in practice. First off, counting these people takes time. By the time anyone can clearly figure out who has or hasn’t found a job for a particular period, the data would irrelevant as the person could have found a job (and/or started looking for another job – temporary work is still an issue). Second, keeping track of changing employment data for much of America consumes a lot of resources. The budget for this is not quite this big, and not many people would find this a good allocation of resources.

So what to make of this? The nation’s employment figures are too high for many people to like but until factors like consumer spending, and bank lending start flowing a little more smoothly (day-to-day changes occur regardless of how good or bad the economy is), it will be daunting to get data that is accurate and (I hesitate to say) makes us feel good enough to think the economy has recovered.