A lot has happened in the last 2 months. Politically, the economy tanked and we had a monumental presidential election. The global reaction to the election of Obama has been extremely positive, and it was amazing to witness the election at my house with a bunch of Latino friends who recognize that they have something in common with Obama. Other countries have increased their faith in our country, not just because a majority of people were able to look beyond Obama's skin color, but because he is intelligent and he realizes that we need to communicate with other world leaders if we want to improve foreign relations. I'm excited to travel outside the country and the for the first time in a while feel proud to be American.
So now Obama has a tough job. I just read that in November over 500,000 jobs were lost. In addition to reading about loss of jobs, I've talked to lots of people who are at companies that are laying off people. Where are all these jobless folks going to work? Are people going to downgrade from middle-class jobs to lower-class ones? I don't think so, but what other options are out there? Most companies that are going through layoffs aren't in a position to hire. And it's not exactly an easy time to start up a new business, so we won't see a lot of new jobs popping up other than federal efforts to reconstruct our roads, schools and to make things more energy efficient. That is one solution that will help, but it will still leave many people unemployed, needing to cut down their expenses, which trickles down to industries at every level. So unfortunately I think the economy looks bleak. I hope I'm wrong, but I just don't see how it's going to start rebounding within the next 5 years or less. I'm very curious to see what happens.
At Intercambio we just sent out our year-end appeal, which usually brings in a good chunk of our annual revenue from individuals. This will be indicative of the impact on us. Some nonprofits will thrive because they truly need it immediately, such as shelters and food banks. But how will nonprofits that provide more sustainable, long-term services like Intercambio fare? We've already had one major foundation freeze their funding for everyone (a $30K grant to us) and another small foundation cease their funding of us because of a shrinking portfolio. However, some individuals are recognizing that now is the time to be as generous as possible.
What will happen with immigration? Now would be a great time to implement an amnesty and collect money from the millions of undocumented immigrants who would be more than happy to pay fines of a couple thousand dollars in order to receive documents. That could provide tens of billions of dollars during a time of need. Should that money go to bail out companies that pay their CEO's $40M a year? That's a whole other question, and that kind of crap needs to change soon. Our social security system might be hurt by an amnesty though because now many immigrants are paying into SS and never receiving a dime because they're working under a different name or #. We'd have to actually pay them this money that they earned. But more importantly it seems that the government just hasn't figured out the logistics for how an amnesty would actually work and set forth reasonable quotas for the future. I hope Obama and McCain work together to make something happen soon, because this is one issue where McCain actually has good ideas. Or at least he did a few years ago when the McCain-Kennedy bill was proposed.
I'll keep doing my part and just wait and see what happens.
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