They look a little green yet

Reading economic stories has been a bit surreal this week. Take the New York Times. One day, people over 50 are worried that they've been involuntarily consigned by their layoffs to an old age of cardboard shoes and shopping carts.
The next day, experts tell us the Great Recession is officially over. (But the "non experts" in real life say hell no, it isn't.)
I should feel vindicated that someone is saying the same thing I've been saying since the recession started--that it feels like people in their 50s have been dropped off on a desert island while the party cruise line goes on without us. We'll have less income to put our youngest kids through school, less to take care of our own parents and less in our pension funds to support us though we'll live longer (unless the rampant age discrimination makes us all so depressed we just decide to end it all.)
And then, the second story about how on paper, the recession is already over, yet most people are still so miserable they don't see it that way.
That should make me feel good, right? Someone agrees with me. You can't say the recession is over until people start getting their jobs back.
But it doesn't. It doesn't make me feel good or optimistic at all.So instead of fixating on those two downers, I'm looking at a bright and happy film that was promoted today on my web browser home page today.
It is a film about a money tree.
Filmmaker Amy Krouse Rosenthal and friends hung $100 of folding money in a little tree in downtown Chicago and then filmed the reaction. Here is the clip from YouTube:





As you see, an amazing number of people walked on by without noticing. I blame this on the fact that many were talking on cell phones. Damned electronic devices. What we need is a phone with an app that is like a money alarm. It would detect the loose $20 blowing in the wind and alert you with a happy song. Like maybe this one from Looney Tunes. (Just ignore those guys in hats. I have no idea who they are.)




But I digress.
Amy's project took place just last summer, when people were plenty hard up for cash. So I can only assume Chicago must be the land of plenty and we should load up our possessions on the old pickup truck and move there.
But wait! Apparently Amy was not the first to come up with this idea. Someone in Australia did it too, and then used it for a commercial.
Here's theirs:




I can't help noticing that the Aussies put their money on a little more of a challenging tree, so people had to hop and climb to get it. Michelle Obama, there's an idea there for you and your efforts to curb obesity.
So could this become a film-making trend? Could it happen here in Kansas City? I'd like to end with a plea: Oh filmakers. Oh, behavioral scientists. Please, please come to our neighborhood with your magic money trees. (And not that Australian money, either, but real American dollars. )
I promise I'll look up. I promise I'll notice.
Until then, I'll just tend my apple and cherry trees, grape vines and home garden. It's not quite the same as picking a bushel of money.
But almost.