2024: How are We Doing (Metaphorically Speaking?)

That’s one small step for man. One giant leap
for mankind. --Neil Armstrong

We travel 12 trillions of miles in one year as our planetary home
takes us all for a ride just to get us back to our same
orbital and seasonal starting spots.
Of course, our entire solar system also moved its location
and that added many more miles to our total.
Still, the distance traveled is barely discernible
whatever units we use by which to plot our course.

We are all one year older and one year closer
to our cosmic destinations
And that makes for many new year’s resolutions.
We need no further probing.

In football parlance we’re down to the
2-minute warning
When desperation sets in
Like the “Hail Mary” pass
And working the clock for a few extra seconds.

Will it all come down to one kick of the ball?
Will cosmology and a sense of fair play allow us to
seek a divine intervention for one last time
and lift us across the goal line in a final burst of glory?

Well, let’s face it: Desperate times call for desperate measures.
And being behind the eight ball starts with E and that
rhymes with P and that stands for Pool. ( Meredith Wilson gave us
a fun-filled song, but not much from which to divine the truth).
Silently Earth moves supersonically adding but one
calendar second—or not—
to our game plan. That is hardly
enough time in which to wiggle a stock price
just to cut our losses short.

They say a foxhole has no atheists.
And we definitely are in a foxhole.
Do we hunker down and wish we had more assault weapons
to take on our adversaries?
Who can say? Even Wayne LaPierre of NRA infamy
lost his job at this critical juncture. There went his
knowledge of life and death issues often called upon
by our advanced thinkers to
Think things through for us. Like Donald Trump.
If it weren’t for a pesky term like a low
IQ, the Donald would have this issue solved by now. IQ’s, as we all know are,
are probably rigged. Reduced to its simplest form
“the rich get richer because they are smarter,
while the poor get poorer because they are dumber."
Oh, did I strike a sour note in the
cosmic scheme of things?
Well, in down to earth terms, the rich are richer by 135 trillion to one
over the poor, and the gap is moving to
35 times that ratio. In math terms it will soon be 4,725 trillion to 1.
In IQ terms it will remain a draw:
At a steady 1 to 1.
In economic terms the solution is this:
Reduce new money flows from 7-to-4 (rich over poor) to a new level of
5 to 5. Cut M&A’s by 50 percent for more
competition, the lifeblood of economic freedom.
And change real tax rates to a fairer
rich-to-poor ratio. And
Ouila! There went
95 percent of our economic pain.

Well, that’s my contribution. The economist in me
has spoken. Ignore my advice and you
risk pure unadulterated pain: I could take up
singing!