The economic recession that has crippled the world economy for the last few years is, according to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, “likely” to be over. We won’t know for sure until well after the fact, but the indicators are currently pointing towards a growth in our Gross Domestic Product. Unfortunately for those of us who don’t have lots of money in the stock market, the unemployment rate is going to remain high for a long time – possibly years. Unemployment is always a “lagging factor” during a recovery and is the last economic indicator to show improvement. This time around they don’t think the unemployment rate is going to come back quickly at all, so those of us who are out of work or stuck in a low-paying job and unable to find anything else are going to be mired down for a while.
I’ve mentioned before how difficult it is to maintain a healthy diet when you are poor due to the high cost of nutritious food, so imagine my surprise when I read recently that despite the fact that things, in general, tend to suck during an economic downturn the populace on the whole tends to get healthier.
I’ve said on several occasions that I picked the folks who work for me here at ShrinkGeek because of the fact that they represented a fairly wide range of perspectives on health and fitness. They also happen to be big geeks, but that’s beside the point. While we can all pretty much agree that the best way to improve your life is to eat less and exercise when we wander beyond that particular point we start to diverge in our viewpoints on how, exactly, to go about doing so. On some things we utterly and completely disagree.
You know, it’s not very often that I get the opportunity to post a picture of a rather attractive and scantily clad woman here on ShrinkGeek and still have the right to claim that my doing so is in the realm of “legitimate” reporting. Today just happens to be one of those days.