Posted on 09/09/2010 2:51:06 PM PDT by neverdem
La rentrée is what the French call this time of year: the re-entry. Everything comes to a stop in August; it is too hot to work, and the whole country slows down during the late summer dog days. Then, come September, we come back from the beach, from the cabin in the woods, or wherever we’ve been, and the life of the working world starts up.
The air turns crisp; apples from the new harvest replace melons, berries, peaches and apricots in the produce aisle. On the first cool nights of September, we remember: there is such a thing as October, as light frost, as Halloween. The year turns a corner and the working world is back.
Fall has always struck me as the most American of seasons. This isn’t just about football and the world series. Fall is the Puritan time: we are less interested in gathering rosebuds than in storing up nuts; winter is coming and we need to prepare. Enough of the lazy consumerism of summer; it is almost with relief that Americans roll up their sleeves for the start of a new working year.
This particular rentrée does not, however, find the country in good spirits. According to the Real Clear Politics average, more than 61% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. With unemployment at 9.6% and underemployment double that, almost one out of five Americans who want full-time jobs can’t get them. Trillions of dollars in home equity and stock market value has disappeared since 2007, while the federal debt has skyrocketed. China and India are growing blazingly fast; even Germany is growing faster than...
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The problems we face today are urgent and complex, but they are not the problems of failure. We are suffering the consequences of success...
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.the-american-interest.com ...
i got a year of involuntary vacation, now i work for a third if what i once did.
frankly, when the proper economic opportunity presents... i shall run up its ass and trim its mustache on my way out its mouth.
we aint these people. leaving us idle simply invites insurrection.
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