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Highlands Today

It Will Take All Americans To Fix Our Ailing Economy

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 21, 2008

For those of us who didn't live through The Great Depression, these days are as scary as they come when it comes to our country's economic situation. It seems as if every day there's a new angle to our woes, and most folks feel helpless to do anything about it.

The amount of pressure on President-elect Barack Obama is huge. A lot of that pressure will be unfair, because there's no way a new president can turn things around anytime soon. In fact, we hope he has a heart-to-heart talk with Americans about the challenges facing us and give people a role in doing our part to get through these difficult days.

Perhaps he should ask all Americans to decrease their energy consumption by 20 percent within six months, as one person suggested. Or perhaps there is community service or some other task that Americans can do to make a difference. Obama has an army of motivated followers who want to be called upon. Almost all Americans, we believe, will be willing to do their part if it truly did something to help our country.

Of course, there will be those who won't do it. In fact, they'll do just the opposite. Just like Rush Limbaugh's Florida mansion with a rain forest full of rare wood, as he described it to a New York Times writer, others will want to see Obama fail. There were plenty waiting for President Bush to fail, too. It's a sad side of the human psyche, but let's be realistic, some people are just jerks.

What Americans can't do is just sit back and expect someone else to fix all these problems. It can't work that way. We'll have to sacrifice in some way, and we should if it helps our country get back on track.

The important thing is that our nation can and will return to economic good times. The alternative is to fail, and Americans don't like that. So we have faith that the better side of our collective nature will prevail and meet the challenges before us. But it will have a price, and all Americans better be ready to pay it when the time comes.

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