“It’s a Good Life”
Recently, I was asked what it will take for the average “Joe in the Street” to realize the Biden economy is roaring like gangbusters and is getting better every day. The short answer is as always, when better paying jobs are available and the middle-class goes back to work with the mortgage bills paid, and credit card debt kept at manageable levels.
I am glad to report, even with the prospect of continued rounds of the Covid-19 virus repeatedly morphing its Wile E. Coyote ways back into our hearts, lungs, clogging our hospitals the economic boom will happen.
Yet, this is not what I am worried about. What I find myself concerned with is whether after four years of magic, hocus pocus, or as George Bush the Elder called it, “voodoo economics” John Q Public has realized that when it comes to economics, there is no magic wand to wave, no Hogswart spell to incant, the stock market is not the economy, and there is no supernatural way around the basic rules of supply and demand.
In 1789, President George Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton as his Secretary of the Treasury. In 1791, Hamilton delivered to Congress the third part of a plan for the economic foundation of the United States. Report on the Subject of Manufacturers. It has been our guiding light toward true prosperity as a country ever since.
Now, if you are like the average American, you want the best most innovative products at an affordable price, if not in the abstract, free. We haven’t gotten to the free part yet, but always keep in mind products and goods, at least not yet, do not invent, assemble and mass market themselves.
It takes workers to do that and when the average worker on or off the assembly line draws a paycheck to buy the very goods he himself or herself helped create, voila! The middle class, where the economy grows from the middle-out, is when America does what it does best. The most good for the most people. Oh, and BTW, this is capitalism, not socialism and certainly not fascism, which is a theory of politics and government and not, I say not economic in nature. So, stop it already.
Ever since the days of Reaganomics, we have allowed ourselves to be fooled for what is “best for us”. It never was trickle down poverty. Tax cuts for the rich have repeatedly failed to deliver the so-called promised results of unleashing the potential for extraordinary economic growth. How is that supposed to work? Give people who are already rich even more money to…make their fortune? Not likely.
Why not give tax breaks and incentives to those who are not yet, but want to be healthy, wealthy and hopefully wise? Isn’t it a better idea to help build fortunes than artificially inflate them? It’s not as if hiding money in offshore accounts was a practice invented yesterday. So, we as a nation, fell for that one.
But that wasn’t the only dog and pony, smoke and mirrors show we fell for. Over the past few years, as trickle down became associated mostly with pictures of the wealthiest of wealthy 1% as it were, urinating on anyone and everyone “beneath” them, we moved onto another poorly thought-out conservative wonderland of dollars and no sense, the service economy.
With no need to manufacture, when it is so much easier to make billions by manipulating monetary instruments by buying, selling and then coldly and callously bankrupting business so the executives at the bottom floor of the scam can “harvest” their gains.
They, and by “they” I mean conservative Republicans, Mittens “47%” Romney and his economic vehicle for profit through destruction, Bain Capital come to mind, bankrupted businesses on purpose by saddling the acquired often formerly profitable and with a payroll business with crippling debt through loans right before cashing out at the last possible minute, the workers and their communities be damned.
And yet despite the obvious devious, underhanded anti-capitalist and predatory nature of this practice, we caved and declared these Blagards, parasites of society business “geniuses” while averting our eyes to the plight of our neighbors and praying we wouldn’t be next. Again, on us.
But hey! Things could have been worse. If you think about it, the most sophisticated, heinous, and down-right evil version, and dare I submit, the natural ending destination of a service industry economy was slavery. All work, no pay. A low maintenance workforce for the most part and if you complained you were shot.
Why, if I didn’t know any better, I would say slavery best describes the ultimate labor force of the Elon Musk’s most feverish dreams. And, if he could get that pesky government off his back every now and then so he can bust unions and continue to steal our precious resources for virtually nothing in return, well you get the picture.
Or do you? Remember the 6 years old monster from the Twilight Zone? The one that put all of the “bad men” into the cornfield? I can see it now, “Elon! Put him in the cornfield!” Yes, it could have been worse. Much worse. Still could. But then again, that would be on us, right?
Maybe this time we will start educating for the future right here in America. Maybe we can retrain those who need training to enter into a new field, based on information and/or green energy, the two undeniable future directions of job growth and opportunity in the new world economy.
Maybe we can go back to making stuff, sophisticated, unique, better than the rest made in the USA, you know, Hamilton’s manufacturing-based vision that worked for over 200 years? No more outsourcing, no more dependence on oil, foreign or domestic.
A new reality where constant learning and improvement in general is built into our jobs and professional careers? And, maybe, just maybe, each and every one of us can not only watch, but participate in America’s climb back to the top of the world economic order, with the wealth of our nation once again residing primarily in the middle class.
A land that is rich not because the 1% is rich, or the government is rich, or businesses are rich, but where it is We, the People, and our standards of living that dictate the true meaning of a rich, wealthy, and wise society. I’m ready. Are you?
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Hopefully this magic trend in the economy will be felt in my pocket!