We Gained More Than We Lost

The NBC Nightly News last night had a segment on the possibility of the US Post Office simply closing it’s doors, and the segment featured the loss of friendly communications around the wooden post office in a tiny North Carolina Post Office. Elderly people dropping by to ask the equally elderly postal clerk about how neighbors were doing, and picked up their communications with the “outside world.”

So, that is what the vaunted Post Office has been reduced to, social services in small town America. The PO is in Debye $8 Billion, and that seems a costly social service.

My wife remembers the days when in her tiny Massachusetts town, she would pick up the phone and the operator would say, “Hi, Jean. Who do you want?”

Jean would say, “Hi, Tinny (Yes, that was her name), I would like Ginger” and Tinny would say, “Sorry Jean, Ginger just went to Fineberg’s for shopping, She should be home in an hour.”

Jeans phone number was 454, Judy’s was 561…

Yes, we lost a lot when that went away, but we would not go back for anything,

 

Read It And Weep!

Every year the World Economic Forum, attended by the grand Pooh-Bahs of the economic world, meet in Davos, Switzerland and contemplate the economic health of the world, and each year they rank the economic health of nations based on economic reports and a survey of 15,000 business leaders worldwide.

The Associated Press reports the nation standings:

In 2008, when Bush was still president, we ranked Number One in the World.(Admittedly, his policies put us on this dangerous slide…)

Last year we had slipped to FOURTH.

This year, FIFTH!

Switzerland is Number One, Singapore second, Sweden third, Finland fourth, and then the US followed by Germany sixth, then the Netherlands, Denmark, Japan and Britain.

France is 18^th and troubled Greece is 90^th.

“The forum praised the U.S. for its productivity, highly sophisticated and innovative companies, excellent universities and flexible labor market. But it also cited “a number of escalating weaknesses” such as rising government debt and declining public faith in political leaders and corporate ethics.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44423519/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/us-falls-th-global-competitiveness-survey-shows/?GT1=43001#.TmfSX-xeWuJ