* Illustration: Christoph Niemann * I've got a secure job, but this bear market gives me the creeps. Is it my duty to buy a new Jet Ski to help the economy?
This is why colleges split economics into micro and macro. Unless your name is Madoff, your individual impact on the economy is negligible. You can't spend us out of Depression 2.0 all by your lonesome. Buy the Jet Ski; don't buy the Jet Ski. Whatever.
It's only when everyone decides to put off buying a Jet Ski—a reduction in aggregate demand—that things get dicey. When we all stop spending, the economy collapses, and theoretically, without a massive Keynesian infusion of government dollars, it's just you and the zombies. Now, if you used the Jet Ski money to pay down debt, that might at least help in the long run. The economy needs financially stable households more than it needs over-leveraged spendthrifts. "Saving is essential for economic growth," says Sam Allgood, an economist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "The money we save and invest is used by businesses to expand, update, or just get started."
Not glamorous enough? Try upping your charitable donations, the most expeditious way of chipping in. There's no proof that it's better for the economy than buying a Jet Ski, but it's probably no worse. And helping others can be just as stimulating as zooming around a lake.
I recently posted a video of one of my son's high school wrestling triumphs on YouTube. The defeated wrestler's father has asked me to take it down, saying it humiliates his boy. Is his request reasonable?
There are so many great lessons to be learned from high school sports, not least of which is that losing isn't the end of the world. As long as your son's opponent gave it his all on the mat, he has nothing to be ashamed of, and you may politely dismiss his dad's request.
Dad could counter that although his son can handle losing in a packed gym, getting pinned in front of thousands of YouTube viewers is more public humiliation than the kid bargained for. Fair point, but therein lies another vital life lesson: No risk, no reward. "If you're not willing to risk the possibility that your loss will be known by others, then you shouldn't compete," says Shawn Klein, a philosopher at Rockford College in Rockford, Illinois. "That's a cost of competing."
But what if the boy's dad isn't much for philosophy espoused by the famous school of hard knocks? Try smoothing things over with a humble suggestion: Why doesn't he post some of his son's victories on YouTube, too? That assumes, of course, that Junior has any wins to his name. If he doesn't, maybe it's time the kid gave tennis a try. Or slapstick comedy.
When my father died some years ago, my mother had his head cryogenically preserved. Now that Mom has passed, too—and is buried, not frozen—can I finally lay Dad's brain to rest? I always thought the cryonics thing was utter hooey, but it was important to her.
Let's first consider why Ma put Pa on ice. Was it because she genuinely believed that a cure for death (and decapitation) was imminent and that the lovebirds would someday be reunited? That seems improbable, because she didn't arrange for her own remains to be frozen (or "vitrified," in cryonics industry lingo). The more plausible explanation is that your mother never made it through the five stages of grief. Maybe she got stuck on bargaining, two steps away from acceptance. Arranging for the "neuropreservation" of her husband—a process that costs $80,000 and up—probably helped her evade the terrible finality of her beloved's death.
Now that your mother has also journeyed over to the other side, the psychological reason for the preservation has vanished. "Children should live their own lives free of an inappropriate sense of obligation to deceased family members," says Clark Wolf, director of bioethics at Iowa State University. So as long as you're comfortable with squelching Dad's one-in-a-zillion shot at eventual reanimation, go ahead and end this chilly drama.
*Need help navigating life in the 21st century? Email us at *mrknowitall@wiredmag.com.
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