September 14, 2011 – While the gold bullion market seems to be lackadaisically hanging around waiting for the Fed’s next miracle I’d like to clear up one little misconception: the government can’t fix problems, it can only create them.

Sure, the government can “create” jobs, but without fail whenever it has done so in the past each job created cost far more than the person who got it would ever earn. It would have been a lot cheaper just to hand out money to the unemployed.

Structural unemployment cannot be cured by incentives to businesses. To them the long-term unemployed are lepers, contagion best exiled to some distant place where they will be somebody else’s problem. The myopia of the business world when it comes to personnel is legendary in the best of times. In the worst of times business gets downright blind.

In times like these businesses can pick and choose who they hire. A company may need a good sound pickup truck to haul stuff around but it will buy a Lamborghini if it can get it for the same price. It’s absurd, but they’ll do it every time. Over a prolonged period of unemployment companies build up highly overqualified and underpaid workforces teeming with discontentment and disloyalty – hardly the recipe for sustained success. But for a while, profits look great.

It’s the same mentality that shoves senior workers out the back door as fresh meat is brought in the front. The wisdom, insight, and intuition that come only with experience is vastly undervalued in America today, and that explains a lot.

None-the-less, we can’t blame business. Business simply reflects society as a whole - it has become lazy and dependent, always on the lookout for the next quick fix. Vision no longer extends beyond the horizon, it ends at the bottom line. But even the bottom line is an illusion, trumped up figures that put a short-term gloss on a dismal future.

And we can’t blame the government. We have met the enemy and he is us. We set our own standards, and we tolerated anything as long as they were met. If our government is not for the people it is still of the people and by the people, so we have nobody else to blame.

Here’s my suggestion: Do one last selfish thing and invest in gold bullion, then extend your hand to a neighbor. You’ll be prepared for hard times while together we rebuild America.

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Jonathan Monroe

Senior Staff Writer - Gold-Bullion.org