The Economy

"Getting and spending, we lay waste our resources:"- Wordsworth

Indications of the health of the economy are expressed in terms of number of new housing starts and consumer spending. Why?

After 9/11, George Bush urged us to go out and be patriotic by shopping. Is it any surprise that we are in the mess we are in when the President of our country thinks that the highest use of the country's people in a time of national crisis is to shop?

What if we had different priorities? What if our priorities were to become energy independent, make our education system the best in the world, ensure decent health care for all our citizens, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and restore our housing stock rather than constantly tearing down and building new? None of these relates to shopping but they are all productive and would put our energy and resources into something which would show real and long term results. As opposed to houses, apartments, storage lockers and garbage dumps bursting with the clutter of stuff, made by low wage workers in other countries and shipped to us.

It is assumed to be a problem that consumer spending is down. And in the short run, because of the way our economy is structured, it undoubtedly is. But what about the long term? A good rule is not to sacrifice long term goals for short term results. If people are cutting back on spending, it means they are either borrowing less money that they don't have or they are saving. If people save, we will have the means to support the improvements we need in our society. Having people spend for the sake of spending is no less than a giant Ponzi scheme, the consequences of which become clear when credit dries up, as it has recently, because people cannot pay back what they borrowed.

Let's try something different. Let's try investing our resources in the long term and providing jobs for people in those areas which are going to reap long term results. Let's invest in education, energy independence, health care and infrastructure improvement. Then we can have an economy built on a firm basis rather than one which, like an addict, needs more and more of what is unhealthy just to reach the same place.