Monday, November 24, 2008

Thankful for lost productivity?

The Thanksgiving Day holiday is only three days away. Or maybe less, for some. This morning I noticed that my early commute to work was very easy. Traffic was nearly sparse. Looking from my office window, I see the parking lot, below, is about half-full at mid-morning. Our building's sandwich shop has a sign posted, "Closed Tuesday, Nov. 25 through Friday, Nov. 28." Fellow passengers on the office elevator were deep in a discussion about getting away from work early today with travel plans that will consume the rest of the week. My company's offices will be closed Thursday and Friday.

All of this has me wondering about the impact of the holiday on our national productivity and how that will affect our already-stressed economy. Some pundits on the air waves this past week have been claiming that worker wages have not kept pace with increases in productivity for quite a few years. Perhaps a reduction in productivity will help? No, probably not.

I have no idea how the current chaos is going to play out. I don't think anyone does. We have not seen deflation in my life time. Inflation, yes; stagflation, yes; but not deflation. I do think that it is safe to say that a great number of people are going to suffer some degree of difficulty and, perhaps, most of us will suffer a decrease in our standard of living before the economy stabilizes and comes out of what appears to be a tail-spin. Certainly, in the economy, nothing is EZ!

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