Rant: The Economy and Society's Misplaced Priorities

I should warn you, I'm very cranky today.

This is the first payday since my company announced pay cuts last month. And all I can say is ouch. Although I'm grateful to still have a job, even at a reduced rate, because the alternative is no fun at all.

Of course, they tell us they did this to keep the company afloat and save our jobs until the economy turns around. Since I work for a small, privately held business I choose to believe them, since there aren't shareholders to keep happy. I'm also trying to believe they really will resort our salaries once things do turn around. (Have you ever noticed how pay cuts happen in one big blow, but the money is restored in little increments?)

Here's hoping the economy really does turn around before they have to cut us again.

But none of that matters, because I see in the paper that the rat bastards at Goldman Sachs have turned a profit and are preparing to pay bonuses—any one of which will probably be more than I can hope to earn in a lifetime.

This being the same company that was on its deathbed a few short months ago.

And they've made this stunning turn around despite the fact that they don't seem to produce anything of tangible value to society.

Think about it.

They aren't curing cancer, educating children, or producing food products or yarn.

Yarn?

Yes, I'm serious. Yarn is important to society because it keeps the knitters and crocheters calm. If you don't think that is vital to the smooth functioning of civilization, then you obviously still don't realize how many of us there are.

You wanna see a revolution of the people? Then make yarn illegal. Chaos will ensue. It would be worse than prohibition.

But I digress.

So, I figure I must have my priorities messed up, because I apparently don't value the proper things. I mean, really, Goldman Sachs and their ilk must be doing something powerful important for the continuing survival of the species that they make so much money doing it.

They must be fending off alien invaders, or accepting misery in the place of others, or sacrificing themselves for a good harvest—and it's just so mind-blowingly incomprehensible that they can't tell us what is really happening because we wouldn't understand. So they talk all this mumbo-jumbo about trading stocks.

Either that or I'm in the wrong damn business.

Anyway, the point is, don't expect to see any new yarn purchases around here any time soon. All we can do is sit tight, hug the puppies, and hope gas prices go down and not up.

Of course, my bad mood might also be because Samson woke me up at 2 am so I didn't get a good night's sleep.