What Just Happened? Again. . .

What are we doing to each other?  Is it really necessary for businesses to let so many people go?  I ask this because of what I heard happened in my city.  A Portland advertising company lost a big client and of course, as every big company seems to be doing these days, they laid off workers--all in one week. 

One of these lay-offs was a young woman who had just started to work as a web designer, having advanced from a lesser position in the company. The very afternoon she was laid off, while bicycling home she ran into a car, ending up in the Emergency Room.  She is okay, said the person relating me this story, just badly bruised.  Oh yeah?  

And how is the company after losing the client? Badly bruised? If they had endeavored to keep this woman on the payroll, would they have folded?  Are all these lay-offs really necessary? Couldn't there be pay cuts instead?  

It would be hard for people to all pitch in and lower their own salaries to prevent lay-offs. But you know, the more people who get laid off, the worse the economy. Why don't we see that if we don't help each other, we'll all go down?  

Sooner or later that person who got laid off will run out of money and stop buying things, necessitating another company to tighten its belt.  Then there comes another round of layoffs! Someone has to think of another solution to this problem.  

I'm not just saying this because my family is out of work.  I am saying this while imagining one devastated young woman bicycling home, not fully seeing where she's going because of the tears in her eyes.  I thinking of who will be next and where this will stop.  

Which will be the last job left?  Would you be willing to share what you have in order to insure that we all have work?  Must some perish while others hold on to what they have for dear life, terrified of joining them in lack?  

Join me in facing down your fears and acting as if you are in the driver's seat again, because you are.  The earth remains just as abundant as it was before this economic crisis.  There is enough and more than enough.  Economic data has nothing to do with food, water or air, except when we withhold it from each other.