Gloomy Economic Thoughts

The Bush economic program has not produced results as originally advertised.

Poverty has increased. The distribution of income continues to favor the few at the top. We have large domestic and foreign twin deficits. Health insurance, educational opportunity, adequate housing, and other elements of a secure economic life are increasingly becoming the preserve of the rich.

The list goes on. What used to be considered excesses of the system have become the norm for doing business: crony capitalism, lying, cheating, stealing, insider trading, illegal tax shelters promoted by the big accounting firms, and the unwillingness to take care of those whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by disaster.

We also have a war that will continue for years because Congress does not have the wherewithal to end it. The war has unsettled the oil market and nothing will bring it back. The cost will exceed a trillion dollars.

High interest rates to fight inflation will attend already low investment and savings rates. The unwillingness of foreign countries to hold U. S. debt has the potential to increase interest rates and to create a financial debacle should they decide to dump our debt.

What the conservative economic thinkers don’t quite understand yet is that the resiliency of the U. S. economy has a limit to the shocks they have imposed on it. The undermining of social cohesion by current economic policies will accelerate during the next down turn. When things turn bad, those at the bottom of the socio-economic scale will not sit idly by waiting for a handout on the street corner.

This is beyond the understanding of many people. Only a grade A disaster and melt down catches the attention of some. The interesting part is that so many people think they are immune from the disasters that have befallen other Americans.

I knew in the back of my mind that if I walked around downtown Chicago long enough, I would eventually get hit by a driver in an SUV talking on a cell phone. It happened to me yesterday.

The Bush administration economic policy is much like that driver in the SUV talking on the cell phone. It keeps running the intersections at full speed mowing down the pedestrians in its way.

Regulating people’s sex lives and birth control choices won’t seem socially important to those who lose their comfortable jobs, their health insurance, and houses. The poor have a lot less access to acceptable sexual relations. Abstinence is an easy vow to keep when nobody wants you. People will have more important things on their minds when the social fabric tears, like finding a good street corner from which to beg.

I still remember the stories my parents told me about the Great Depression. I take them seriously.