#hope #NewEconomy #manufacturing
It’s been said that where there’s life, there’s hope.
We can debate whether that idea holds true in a medical sense, but let’s look at it from a societal sense.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist John Brummett tackled this idea, in connection with Great Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, in a June 28, 2016, column.
He talks about those who appeal to those who’ve been aggrieved by the new economy.
From the end of World War II through the mid-2000s, America saw, mostly, great prosperity.
Most everyone, from factory worker to CEO, benefited. America made things and shipped them worldwide. Now, we don’t make as many things here as we used to, though reports indicate that manufacturing is coming back.
After that prosperous period came the gradual downsizing and exporting of manufacturing. Then, financial collapse came around 2008. To this day, many have never recovered. Therefore, they have lost hope and are using immigrants and others not like them as scapegoats for their predicament.
“Retrenchment, nativism, nationalism, isolationism, exclusion and reactionary politics – history tells us those tempting and emotional reactions not only don’t work, but prove corrosive and dangerous,“ Brummett writes.
So why should you feel hopeful when you’ve been so wronged?
There are many solutions out there to economic distress. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You will find lots of hope, optimism and success among average people, who’ve taken a step, and made the effort, to solve problems in their lives.
Certainly, there are naysayers who will, for their own purposes, want you to stay in your angry rut. But strong people will not listen.
Strong people will find what it takes to move out of economic hardship and into prosperity.
It will require work, and perhaps an exit (not a Brexit) from one’s comfort zone. After all, many experts tell us that success was not born in comfort.
How can one pull himself up by the bootstraps if he has no boots?
Sometimes he has to look for boots, or conceive of boots, to achieve boots. Once the boots appear, he can kick off his new life, with a new mind-set and plenty of hope.
“Democracy, a socially conscious capitalism, international alliance, economic evolution and ethnic and racial tolerance – we need to stay on the ship in service to those principles, not jump overboard in fear of them,” Bruummett writes.
The world is not what it was. Every day – every minute – it changes. Things we used to do for ourselves are being done for us. Ideas that were once ideal are becoming obsolete.
Change should not be feared, but embraced. We should approach new things the way a child approaches a wrapped gift at Christmas. Perhaps we can vent our anger by tearing off the paper. But then, it’s time to see the gift for what it is and learn how it will change our, and perhaps others’, lives for the better.
Peter