“Accursed be the soil because of you! Painfully will you get your food from it, as long as you live. It will yield brambles and thistles, as you eat the produce of the land. By the sweat of your face will you earn your food…” Gen 3; 17-19
A road trip and the native wealth of place
There was a wedding to attend, so we set out from Milwaukee to Knoxville by way of New Orleans – a road trip. As we went, the changing agrarian landscape unfolded before us.
Wisconsin is a state of forest, cattle and diverse crops. We are big in cranberries, tart cherries, apples, potatoes, table vegetables, maple syrup, mint, oh yes and cheese. There is forestry and mining in the state. And to help harvest this “produce of the land” there is manufacturing.
In Illinois the landscape changes to mono-crop fields of corn and soy. In Kentucky forestry returns and slowly cotton enters the picture. Travelling further south, along the west bank of the Mississippi river, in Louisiana cotton is still king and then there are oil pumps.
Indeed our wealth is from the land. Yet unseen in the countryside, the agent harvesting this wealth is commerce.
Our first stop on our way to New Orleans was Chicago, to leave our dog in the care of our son Nathan. He lives in Chicago’s Logan square neighborhood. It’s about four or five miles northwest of the Loop – an international hub of commerce.
Along the way we visited other but now faded hubs of commerce: Shiloh, the site of a battle fought over a railroad hub in nearby Corinth; Vicksburg, a town perched high above the banks of the Mississippi and in the 1860s controlling steamboat traffic on the waters below; and Natchez, whose antebellum mansions mark a bygone era of concentrated wealth and a starting point for an even earlier trade route – the Natchez Trace.
Our road trip and odd route to a wedding in Knoxville, TN via New Orleans was set by two circumstances. First, our daughter Hanna recently moved there and second, neither my wife nor I had ever visited that charmed city.
In thinking of native wealth we naturally think of climate and soil, we think of minerals, of forests and fisheries. But commerce too is part of the native wealth of place. In some places that wealth is so compelling that those places evolve and change but the nevertheless endure. New Orleans is one of those places, as are Chicago and New York, New York.
I mention these only because they are the places my children have chosen to labor in and seek their fortunes. Their harvest is not directly from the soil, but is more closely tied to commerce and to the wealth of cities. Nevertheless, going back to Genesis, they too will earn their bread by the sweat on their faces. There are no free lunches.
This brings me to the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd who seem to believe the economic role of government is to distribute wealth when to the contrary it is to facilitate commerce for the creation of wealth.
To be sure, the “occupy” protesters are voicing the legitimate concerns shared by a majority of Americans: a nearly 20% unemployment rate when the under employed and those who have quit looking for work are factored in; a decline in real wages; lost wealth in retirement accounts and home values; and college graduates facing tough job prospects and loads education dept.
There is much anger and resentment in America today.
Yet focusing the blame on “millionaires, billionaires” and big financial institutions is misguided.
Of all that our federal government does four things are primary: national defense, securing our borders, ensuring our civil rights, and enabling commerce. All else is tertiary.
In terms of enabling commerce its job is to: maintain a stable currency; provide infrastructure necessary for commerce; and to respect the “rule of law.” Instead we have a government of “quantitative easing” and economic engineering.
Regulatory compliance costs consume 15% of the private sector economy. Federal spending is about 26% of gross domestic product and state and local spending consumes another 20%. Compliance with our byzantine tax code, as well as forcing employers and shop keeper into being tax collectors takes another 5%. (See attached)
From this, it’s easy to point out that in our economic calculus government directly or indirectly controls or consumes almost two thirds of our economy. Yet the “occupy” crowd direct their rage at the “millionaires and billionaires,” the one percenters who still have enough of a grip on the private economy to create wealth and jobs and who in fact foot the greater portion of our taxes.
It’s a straw man diverting our attention from the degradation of the “rule of law,” and the heavy chains cast by that degradation have imposed on commerce. Through executive order, the promulgation and enforcement of administrative rule, “law” has become arbitrary and capricious – a tool to advance political agendas and to garner political gain and economic advantage.
In what should be a free economy, the government is picking winners and losers. On the win side: labor with the bailout of GM and Chrysler; green energy with the loan guarantees to the like of Solyndra and sweetheart tax deals to the likes of General Electric.
And there are legions of losers. There are now more than 4000 ways to run afoul of federal statutory criminal law. The regulatory code implementing those laws vastly multiplies our exposure to potential criminal prosecution. The case of the Gibson Guitar Co. is telling. (Full Text) The hand of soft tyranny has a stranglehold on commerce.
No comments:
Post a Comment