By George Johnson, JMI Intern & FSU Senior in Economics
It’s amazing how Halloween changes for an individual from childhood to adulthood. Back when I was still of the trick-or-treating age, Halloween consisted of the kids in my neighborhood and me dressing up as ghosts, witches, zombies, and the like. After all, Halloween was a celebration of the spooky and scary. But now as college students, we use our Halloween parties as an opportunity to show off our creativity–we dress up in something funny or clever rather than “scary.” Scream masks and Dracula fangs just don’t do the job anymore.As college students, our biggest fears today are difficult to translate into Halloween costumes. How do you dress up as a bad economy, a miserable job market, or an uninterested employer? These are what every college student is afraid of, and rightfully so. But, of course nothing is scarier than the root of these problems: an ever-growing federal government.As the government’s power continues to spiral out of control, the economic foundations of our country grow ever more treacherous. Federal legislation, stimulus, and bail-outs designed to fix the problems only make things worse, as they are born from special interests and unsound economics. A federal government that will not recognize its Constitutional limits and let the private sector breath is truly a nightmare come to life for college students.Instead of graduating from school and offering our labor and expertise to employers in a free market, we must scrap around for any connection we can find to land a job in a heavily regulated environment. And as we try to climb the corporate ladder, assuming we can land a job in the first place, it is likely that we will continue to face increasing regulation.So what costumes would appropriately encapsulate true horror for soon-to-graduate college students? Here are a few I might have worn last night:- Wrap popped bubble wrap around your body–this of course would be the housing bubble! A result of unsound economic policies from the federal government and the Federal Reserve, the burst of the housing bubble left us in the “great recession” that we are dealing with today.- Dress up like a doctor, slap on an Obama sticker or two, and voila! You’re ObamaCare! As premiums rise and inefficiencies mount, thanks to the government takeover of healthcare, people are soon going to long for the days of the “unjust” system that we used to have.- Wear a coat and tie, sport a full beard, and carry around the New York Times–hello Paul Krugman! The current face of big-spending, big-deficit Keynesian economics, the policies that economist and NYT columnist Krugman cheers for continue to put our country in a deeper and deeper hole, while making the job market worse and worse.
2010
