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For people under the age of 50, do not rejoice with your lives.  I believe that the notion of the 9-5 work day is officially over.  I know that since the dot com era, there had been a mad rush to go after the new gold of ecommerce.  The whole first-to-market with ambitious IPOs push productivity to a new game.  Several recessions later, we're now faced with the worst economic situation since the Great Depression.  I'm seeing people fearful of the their jobs and that fear is allowing employers to (unethically) forcing workers to go beyond the normal work hours into an overdrive mode.

In talking to various friends, it seems that no one is escaping this madness.  My friends in Japan work tirelessly, my friends in the game industry are encroached by nonsensical deadlines set by insane marketing departments, and the new web companies are facing similar grief. 

Yet what is the gain in all of this?  What is this blind death march that I'm seeing take place?

In Japan, as I've mentioned on numerous occasions, business culture, in my view, never recovered from the mentality of overworking.  However, in the post-WW2/Bubble years, there were two purposes: 1) to rebuild Japan; 2) the amount of money that had been flowing around.  When the economy felt its first massive collapse though, I heard that overtime pay no longer was compensated.  These days, things are far worse.  Japan is undergoing it's umpteenth recession, but staggering stories of people barely able to make payments on the already overinflated properties while working insane shifts show that Japan seems ready to explode from a dead business culture.

I've always felt that Japan in many ways is a preview of what America will be facing.  Perhaps, Japan is 10 years ahead in that regard.  But if we look at America since the dot com bubble period, I would say that we never mentally recovered from the hope of the American dream, where any company can become the next Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay or Google.  Or even the housing market boom where people gambled on normally stable assets.

So what can we blame?

I can name you a single source:

Human Greed.

While it's assured that we all implicitly know this is the cause of what's going on, citing where the blame properly belongs has not been a task of veracity.  Most of us are inclined to blame the Bush administration or Wall Street for the global collapse in the economy.  However, can we not also take aim at oil companies, foreign countries (India, China, Dubai), stingy business people, greedy corporate lawyers and our own desire to be on the next episode of the Rich and Famous for the world's current condition?

Naturally, Wall Street, the banks, oil companies, the motor industry, etc. all have played their part.  But most people too have added themselves into this equation.  It's amazing how people easily forget that they were attempting to own homes that they could not afford (and therefore did not deserve) based on loans that started from 0%.  Didn't anyone teach them the fundamentals of home ownership when they went to buy?  Or what about the desire for large SUVs?  GM might've pushed it out, but the customers demanded it (just as Toyota had pushed out the largest SUV).  And if the global banks had, indeed, acknowledged American's avarice, why did they partake in this gambling?

The answer: everyone is a greedy pig.

I've already figured out a few ways to solve this recession:

1) Set everyone to 0.  Just like in the movie/book Fight Club, the solution is to have everyone's credit scores set to 0.  Let everyone and the world start from scratch, acknowledging that everyone fucked up and that the easiet cure is just to give everyone a clean slate.  Banks, credit card companies, and everyone will be given a base amount to restart with and from there start this whole process over again.  Unlikely scenario (unless you use a bomb like in Fight Club)
2) Admit that we are a bunch of greedy pigs and lower our expectations.  Forget those MTV bimbo shows that fill our heads with images of false materialism.  Realize that most of us are just trash, set in this world as an unintended accident and that our best hope is just to survive as long as we can.  From there, stop demanding so much.  Stop trying to become the next Bill Gates/Google/Facebook success story and just be happy with a simple business that makes sense.

The problem I'm seeing is that these companies are ambitious for no good reason outside of a few people's personal gain.  The vast majority of us will suffer in the meantime while these few take advantage of the current economic conditions to threaten us perpetually to cut our jobs.

But think about it.  If you can remove the materialism out of your lives, do away with things like credit cards, spend only the cash you have, be sensible with your money, lower your expectations about who you are and what you are, then this recession will seem like nothing.  The recession is only bad because the country has been on an ultraconsumerist philosophy for so long that things have caught up in terms of the real worth.  We've been on borrowed money for the longest time and we could never pay off when the lenders came to collect.  That's the real issue.

That said, if you enjoy being overspent, stressed, worrying over your job, then continue with this mentality.  Apathy will be your best friend during these times.