It's Another New Year's Eve

One year ends, another begins.  
Seems I’ve noticed this happening before.  I’m no more excited about this year than I was about last year.  It will have the usual adventures common to all: plumbing that picks the most inconvenient hour to quit working, vehicular challenges that arrive unannounced and computers that glitch no matter how frequently you update.  Colds will remain incurable and will wear you out, stomach bugs will take a week to work through everyone in the house, and someone will spill the shampoo in the shower but no one knows who that someone was.  It will continue to be my lot in life to have but four sheets of toilet paper remaining when I enter the bathroom.  No one will hear my pleas for assistance until I shriek like a banshee [it is as humiliating as it sounds, truly]. Undoubtedly there will be a mix of good days, bad days and days where I wonder how I could think it was Wednesday until 2 o’clock in the afternoon when I realized it was Tuesday.  And so, instead of resolutions, since I am an Old Biddy, this year I’m predicting the future.  Laugh with me….



Prices will keep rising though wages do not, best shut up and be glad to have work.
That certainly isn’t a new year’s news flash.  Jobs will continue to be rationalized by moving production and services overseas.  Companies will claim they’re altruistic, eager to help the world embrace better standards even as their to-be-better-off employees drop dead from exhaustion, exposure to toxins and are replaced easily enough by the remaining millions.  Companies will sign large contracts with local agents that pollute the air, the water and doze down whatever gets in their way - things these companies can’t do in their home country.

Strangely enough the countries of origin for these manufacturers all have standards in place that protects not only the worker but also the environment.   Yes, it costs more to treat workers like human beings deserving of adequate compensation, respect, safe environments, and air and water regulations so they don’t live in a cesspit at the end of the day.  And, yes, towns, counties and the feds expect their portion of the pie in taxes to support the infrastructure that supported the fledging business you once were.

Of course, none of this rationalizing is about improving the world; it’s about the profit at the end of the day and the shareholder’s satisfaction at the close of the market.  That the laborer deserves no part of that cannot be more loudly proclaimed than to walk away from your neighbors, move your business to another country and yet retain not only your citizenship but also a tax break that those neighbors left behind will have to compensate for.  You and your children may live in a wonderful, secure tower for several generations but may I suggest stained glass windows so you do not have to look out on the world you improved.

Therefore, I predict many of those most satisfied this year will eventually be visited by Three Spirits.  May they rest in peace until then….

Politicians will play games with our lives.  
For our own good, laws will be stalled, laws will be passed.  These laws will make political supporters richer or more viable in the marketplace or increase the worth of their companies or all of the above.  Politicians will measure their success in popularity, as if the lives of the populace are of less importance than being the king or queen of homecoming surrounded by their special clique of elite upperclassmen.  They’ll continue to omit, forge, pose, lie, cheat, swindle and spin with smug indifference, comfortable in their immunity from living with the results.  They’ll make promises they know they can’t keep, spout platitudes they don’t believe, and drive us all crazy with election year ads that have nothing to do with what they’ll really DO if they get elected.

Instead of working on a budget that balances, on health care that is truly available and affordable for every single one in the country, on infrastructure improvements and encouraging businesses that will actually employe anyone other than their brother-in-law’s sister’s nephew, politicians will posture, argue, make deals, and add junk to bills that slip by at the final hour.  This is how they will pay back their supporters and make the poll of no matter whatsoever.  I predict politicians will not address with any genuine action the issues of tax reform, veteran’s rights, alternative energy or living wages.

The media will highlight what they know will be most tweeted.  It is ALL about selling and sponsors, it is all about the hits and likes.
Like the boy that cried wolf, no one will believe them when actual news is reported, how can you?  Facts, details, truth, integrity - those words may splash across the paper or screen but the ads are slick and the share link is in flashy bold and that’s what really matters.   Bytes of news is all anyone can handle anyway, why give the public more than they should know?

I predict we’ll continue to hear/ read a great deal about celebrities and murderers and sports figures faster than ever before and with only an occasional difference in wording, no matter the “source”.  We’ll be told countless times about the agenda of the moment until it is truth, whether it is or not.  I predict that someday, historians will marvel at the strange generations that could not discern fact from opinion, details from sensationalism, research from spin.  There will be a reason for that….

Educators will fiddle with systems, proving they, not test scores, are the issue
First, we must admit education is all about the scores [polls] not the future, not the facilities or funding, not the children, not the teachers, certainly not the parents that have abdicated their rights to a voice in the education of their children.  Parents are despised for giving the educational institutions what was demanded of them on the first day of kindergarten: disconnection from their own offspring.

Second, we must acknowledge how afraid Education Secretaries and Gurus are to admit we’ve educated at least two generations to work in a world that no longer, and never will again, exists.  It is oh so easy to point to a compilation of scores and say:  “This is why there is double digit unemployment.  This is why we can’t compete.”  But looking at the sweatshops of China, India and the future planned for Ethiopia … I smell lazy rats fatted on the children entrusted to their care.

When we are willing to consider the possibilities above, we can begin to see through the conjuring trick of:  a new standard that is all we need!  I read an article a couple months ago that stated [without identifying a source or statistic] a high school diploma is essentially worthless except as a piece of identification IF a photo is part of the record.  Of course, this was in aid of promoting the new national standards but it was a *bold* statement all the same.  I wondered at the time why high school teachers weren’t walking out and falling on their red pencils in shame. [maybe because they don’t believe that BS either?]

As our politicians continue to prance and dance, waving their cronies off to improve the world with one hand while vowing to create employment with the other; our educational gurus continue to promise they have the answers.  Too bad they haven’t bothered to examine the questions in oh, what, forty years or so?

But wait, you say?  They redesigned the tests, reimaged the texts, redesigned mathematics so facts are irrelevant, and rewrote history.  Of course, how you apply this ever evolving maelstrom of curriculum isn’t really their area, though they’ll certainly insist it is.  The fact employers want employees to follow the directive of the moment without pause in the workflow seems to elude the educational sector.  Of course, they’ve lived with that truth so long maybe they hope [against evidence] it is better out there, in the private sector.
Therefore, I predict the New Standards will eventually be more accurately labeled: BtrNot2Thnk.

Living Wage will stay in the trending lists, but those words won’t mean what you think they mean.
Permanent Part Time is a lovely little sneer at the employee you want excellent, if not outstanding, effort from without obligation beyond hourly pay.  Best of all is the fact there is no bother with benefits, not even the federally mandated ones.  It was easy to figure out employees can work X weeks over part time hours without jeopardizing that status, the guidelines are in crisp pdf format, free of charge.  Employers need feel no qualms about denying them vacation or sick days because hey, they’re not full time.

And the maniacal laughter you hear aimed at people willing to work full time but unable to reach that goal due to policies implemented to prevent just such foolishness is the FINE many will be paying for being unable to justify purchasing health insurance instead of food.  Since you can’t eat insurance, or fuel your vehicle to get to the part time job, or soap to wash with, never mind have a sick day, the FINE is exactly the Kick in the Teeth you think it is.  Really.  Seriously.  You aren’t as big an idiot as the Educational Gurus and Politicians believe you are, I promise.

I predict a token minimum wage will be seen sometime near the end of the year.  I also predict it will be more in line with 2005 cost of living than 2015 and be just enough to nudge anyone working over 30 hours per week to the next tax rate.

More municipalities will declare bankruptcy but unlike the banks, they won’t get bailed out.  
The underemployed will continue to pay fewer taxes, therefore there will be less money to support towns and cities [won’t that factoid stay ignored].  When the water is turned off, the trash left on the curb, the sewage treatment plant shut down, it will just be too damn bad.  Move along, there’s nothing left here but the ghost of lives wasted.  Because really, is there any more $ to take from generations of taxpayers-to-come?  [well, yes, if there’s a government shut down in the offering and a stack of bills to slide in with it at the last minute, there is a fortune in future taxes, guaranteed].

Where these refugees of bankrupt towns should relocate, not to mention how they should do so, will be an interesting thing not to hear reported.  That fear of massive relocation of foreclosed on citizenry is why the bail out of town X just might pass.  Images of Katrina will haunt us forever, as it should, but the lessons have been so long ignored we’ll probably once more see weapons turned on our neighbors that want to cross a bridge to get to water and a roll of toilet paper that hasn’t been used.  [that report will go viral in twenty minutes] And it will certainly be their own fault, probably because they were too lazy [or stupid, though no one will use that word, disbelieving ... maybe] to get out before the bankruptcy proceedings were finalized.  HOW they were supposed to do that will remain a mystery.

 I predict we’ll be inundated with the latest doings of some rock star in rehab so we won’t hear how corruption, mismanagement and bad investments bankrupted the towns and cities long before the big business pulled out for rationalizing and tax payers faced underemployment.  No one will serve time for stealing tax payer money - they can afford a good lawyer.  Ignore the Creative Accounting that obscured these facts for years, this is not the truth you’re looking for….

Nations will fuss.
Skirmishes, battles and undeclared wars will continue to be fought and people will die.  Statistics will be manipulated to promote one side or the other, facts and truth can wait for the history books to be revised, again.  Nothing will be resolved. The rebels of last year will be the corrupted powers of next year and more people will die.

Viruses will flourish because there is no profit in the cure and no mandate to make that irrelevant.   We’ll fear each other, the dark, and being without an internet connection or cell signal.  Face to face conversation will intimidate us.  E-mail will see a revival because people are sick of one liners, flashing ads and seeing the same image sixteen times in one day.  Women will work harder for less than their [grand] mothers made twenty years ago.  Men will do the same.  Unfortunately, men haven’t learned to swallow inequity with a smile as well as women, but that gap is narrowing, rapidly.  This form of equality will not please anyone.  Domestic violence will increase.  Women will fight back and be convicted because they hesitate; children will suffer, and men won’t be believed.  Our neighbors will cry in the night and no one will hear.

And even so….
I predict we’ll still get up in the morning, stumble for the toothbrush and hope we have another daily grind in us.  We’ll laugh with our families, friends and co-workers.  We’ll squeeze the budget tighter, hugging frugal practices like arcane secrets.  We won’t take a vacation beyond our own backyard.  It’s enough to have vacation time.  Some that haven’t heard the gospel of debt free living will hear the good news this year and burn their credit cards.

The banks and government won’t appreciate that but I will embrace you and encourage the usury-free lifestyle with enthusiasm.  Our parents and grandparents - OK, your great-grandparents - won’t seem so crazy when they speak about how they did without until they saved, how they used everything to the last thread and wasted nothing.   We’ll comprehend them in a new way, maybe that’s not as bad as it seemed two years ago.

There will be days it doesn’t seem fair.  There will be days when it isn’t fair.  There will be days we feel so blessed, others we’ll be certain we’re cursed.  Nights will never seem long enough, morning always too soon, and time on the weekend will fly faster than time on Monday.  Naps will come infrequently but when we get the chance, we won’t despise the occurrence.  We will snore proudly!

Children will still want someone to listen to them when they have a stray thought that is really important, to hold them when they’re frightened, and laugh at their jokes even if they mess up the punch line.  Oh and by the way, they’ll also hope not to have to face brussel sprouts on their plate twice in one week.  Those of us that walk in faith will continue to struggle not to look at the world for answers or hope but at ourselves and that Big Fat Log sticking out of both eyes.

Lastly,
I predict the weather will stay unpredictable, but I like it that way.