I’ve been forced into an (for me) unnatural tunnel vision for the past year. The Tunnel is the Red Plan and like a soldier in the trenches my chief preoccupation has been ducking my head when I hear Whiz bangs and occasionally raising my head over the trench to take a pot shot at the enemy which is doing the same thing as me. Living this metaphor has made my old familiar civilian life next to impossible to live. Yesterday I began toting up the things I’ve given up. Occasional afternoons walking the beach picking up agates to clear my mind, Reading the several periodicals I subscribe to, reading books period. Until I picked up Bryson’s book (which has been a hoot) I’d let three years go without reading a new book. I stopped my mile-long lap swims about seven months ago. Keeping up with home maintenance and gardening have been very difficult.
But every now and again mail call comes round and I find out what’s going on back home. Vic just sent me this link to Robert Reich’s economic blog. I found that interesting because Vic has sent me so many arch conservative commentators material that getting this arch liberals take on our current economic woes seemed out of character.
I’m every bit as agnostic about the best economic policy as I am about the existence of God. I tend to see merit in a great many economic points of view. When I get links like this I often get as much from reading through the many posted reactions which follow and the debate that follows.
In this case one of the responses was from a person who recalled how his Father lost his home in the Depression at age ten and was scarred ever afterwards by it till his death at age 73. He lived a frugal life. My parents did not have it as bad but both recalled their parents difficulties. My Mother remembered her Father, who had lost his postmaster’s position after FDR was elected being lost to a Democrat lying in bed often with migraine headaches worried sick about his future. My Father recalled going with his Father, an ace salesman who lost his job, to farm houses where in his new job required him to deliver the news that the bank was foreclosing and the family would have to leave.
As the oldest child these stories and my parents thrifty ways had an impact on me. My wife and I are savers which has allowed me to gradually put more and more money into my fight against the Red Plan. I’m about at my limit. Actually I’ve passed my limit several times over and am continuing with plans to recover some of the costs should things go our way and some of my money be refunded.
I’ve been appalled that our economy has been built on so much credit. When people started using home equity loans to buy goodies I knew we were in trouble and began harping about this long before 9-11. The Bush Administrations push to keep the economy going afterwards by encouraging more such spending was very troubling.
I have no problems with the Keynesian policy of “priming the pump” (spending tax revenue to get factories working again) or tax reductions to (free up private sector money for additional investment) But I’ve expected the bubble to burst for some time and in fact that was one of the things that led to my previous Quixote moment – running for Congress – which is why I began this blog four years ago.
When the Duluth Chamber of Commerce exults that Red Plan spending will get money circulating again that’s true. It circulates it out of the pockets of people whether they can afford it or not and hands it over to the forces who have the power to get hold of it. If it was going for something our community needed it would be easier for me to accept even though it is based on regressive taxation. Only a small portion of this spending is going toward critical maintenance and far too much of it is going to the company that sold a bill of goods to seven people who were drunk on the intoxicant of Dr. Dixon while the people they represented were sleeping.
Yesterday’s column by the hopelessly hopeful Mr. Heffernan who, like Rodney King, just wanted us all to get along elicited a long heavy sigh from me when I finally got around to reading it. It could have been George Bush telling us all to go out there and spend, spend, spend right after 9-11. Our school board has put us in hock for the next twenty years committing us to pay off building bonds when we should be using it to pay teachers. How much will it suck out of the classroom? We’ve been told its $4 million but I think in the next few years we will learn it will take much more than this. Amplifying this effect is the simultaneous exodus of students from the Duluth Schools which adds another $7 million annual loss to the classroom.
Our operational budget is only a little over $100 million annually. Removing ten percent of it for brick and mortar will drive more children and families out of Duluth. Of course, this is just my prediction, but if I’m right it will be the beginning of a downward spiral. The larger national economic difficulties will only compound the local ones unleashed by the Red Plan. We will get a little short term economic goosing from transferring money from those who are living on the edge to those who are creating something we don’t have a vital need for. It will be like all that home equity borrowing George Bush encouraged us to do that we are now paying such a heavy price for.
My job in the trenches is to elect a sensible school board that will pull in the Red Plan horns and avoid the worst of its excess.
