Craig Common Sense

“An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. ” – Evan Esar

OR

“Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” – Wiard B. Ebeling

In a couple of earlier posts, I alluded to the question posed above. Earlier this year I read the best seller by Thomas Friedman – “Thank You for Being Late”. I so much admire Mr. Friedman and respect his opinions. Not-by-design, I subsequently read a book by Dr. Robert Gordon, a renowned economist from Northwestern University entitled “The Rise and Fall of American Growth”. By the way, neither book is a “quick read”. But I found them both fascinating. While not posing this question, it occurred to me that both authors were really addressing the issue. Dr. Gordon’s book is really an economics treatise, but even a layman can appreciate the wealth of historical data and can gain a general understanding of his conclusions. Both authors clearly convey their “world-view” or as Mr. Friedman calls it how  “The Machine” – “the world’s big gears and pulleys” – work. Both write about how they interpret what has happened in the past and how the world works now.

These two learned men certainly do not share the same view of how the Machine works. I think Dr. Gordon might include Mr. Friedman in a group that he calls “techno-optimists”. Friedman clearly has a great respect and hope for our technological advances, especially the latest advances in artificial intelligence, big-data and other information technology and communication advances. He believes they will propel us into the future. Dr. Gordon acknowledges these marvels as well, but the authors diverge in terms of what they mean to our economy now and what they will mean going forward.

I think it sells these scholars short to say that one is an optimist and one is a pessimist. Clearly, they see different roads ahead for us. Friedman believes that technology can play a large part in improving our economy and our lot in life. Gordon acknowledges the upsides of technology but feels that there are “headwinds” in our future that will more-than-offset what technology can do for us. Gordon does not predict doom and gloom, but the overall conclusion of his work is that our economy has come through a period in the twentieth century that can’t be replicated. He believes that going forward we need to reconcile ourselves to a lower rate of economic growth – our children may NOT be better off than we are and have been.

These excellent books have so much terribly interesting information that anything short of reading them could not capture it, and I won’t try. But of extreme interest to me is that BOTH authors see many of the same issues that need to be addressed going forward and surprisingly they largely agree on what should be done in problem areas such as rising income inequality and fairness in taxation, educational achievement and other opportunity improvements and demography and immigration. I have a too-long alternate version of this article that compares their approaches if anyone is interested. They have lots of other proposals and of course their ideas are much more nuanced that I can capture in a sentence. But it astounded me to see how many commonalities there are from these two very intelligent men who often see things quite differently.

SO, WHAT IS MY POINT? Here are two pretty bright guys – and they see the SAME REAL PROBLEMS in our country. Yes, they disagree on some things, but they have a lot in common too. Why can’t we get past some of differences we have in America and get something done about the areas in which we mostly agree? These problems are real and are not getting any better. Our political leaders seem to be more committed to the blame game than they are to solving our problems. I sometimes feel they will do things that are NOT in our best interest, if it will make the “other side” look bad. Clearly, I don’t have all the answers but I sincerely believe that if we continue down the paths of extremism and paralysis (on both the right and the left) our children WON’T be better off than us. I am not fatalistic. The future CAN be bright – but only if we stop wasting our energy in conflict and redirect that energy to achieving positive outcomes.

My life didn’t turn out like I expected.”
– Roy Hobbs in the movie “The Natural”

When our oldest daughter was in sixth grade, I walked past her room and was jolted by the blaring sound of a Madonna song. In a near subconscious reflex I said – “Turn that crap down!!” I took one more step and nearly fell to my knees as I recalled those EXACT words coming from my Pop as I grooved out on a song from the Beatles “Abbey Road”. I had become my father. How could this be? How CAN this be?

In my youth, especially in high school and college, I KNEW, we ALL knew, that if only we could gain control, we would straighten things out in this world. Racism, poverty, pollution and other problems were simply symptoms of our parents’ and grandparents’ failed efforts to lead the world. When WE gained control – you know like the song from the musical “Hair” – “When the moon is in the Seventh House, And Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars “.

SOOO, how did all of that work out? Well I am sixty-eight now and I am forced to realize that in so many different ways, I am really not much different, WE, are not really so much different than the generations that preceded us. We yearn for progress. We have doubts as to how to achieve it. We want a better life for our children and grandchildren. We worry about the “next generation” and their ability and willingness to shoulder the burdens – just like our parents worried about us. And things weren’t like they thought they were going to be. Problems are a little more difficult than we thought too.

Let’s be fair we haven’t been total failures. We HAVE made astounding technological advances. And despite the concern for international competition our economy is still the engine that drives world commerce. And we HAVE reduced discrimination in many areas although racism, sexism and classism are still alive and thriving. But elimination of poverty? I don’t think so. Elimination of pollution – haven’t got there either. I guess that some of the problems that our elders struggled with are just as intractable to us. But is it true that there really is “nothing new under the sun” – that we didn’t move the needle at all? This might be just more aging boomer dribble, but I DO see some things that have changed – some for the better and some NOT for the better.

• We HAVE made gains in pollution – especially in water pollution – not that we have conquered that by any stretch. But if we are fair, we have to admit that there was a time in the 1970’s that our bodies of water were much lower quality than they are now. Now there IS the whole issue of climate change – I think everyone will agree that the climate is changing, but there are widely divergent views about what to do about that IF anything. There are many who are saying that we are nearing a tipping point in climate change – an existential tipping point. (I am starting to feel another blog post.)

• Elimination of poverty – Census data for 1972 – the year that I graduated – indicates that 8.8% of people age 18 to 64 lived in poverty – 15.1% of those under 18. The same data for 2017 indicates that 11.2% of people aged 18-64 lived in poverty and 17.5% of those under 18. This is a complex issue but it certainly doesn’t seem that we have eliminated poverty or even that we are going in the right direction. Whether one accepts that or not, there is firmer data that indicates that there is an ever-widening chasm between the rich and the poor. A Congressional Budget Office Study completed in 2011 showed that in stark contrast to earlier periods, in the period between 1979 and 2011, income growth for the top 1% of American earners grew at a rate of almost four times the rates seen in lower percentiles. The so-called middle class is fading from our society. I am sure that the reasons for that are many and varied and probably too complex for an old engineer like me. But I have a sense that this is not good – and more ominously, that this will not last. There is going to be some sort of correction – hopefully through peaceful and constructive dialog – that will change this balance. My Pop used to say: “Never do business with someone who has nothing to lose.” I fear that too many of us are approaching that kind of despair and are behaving accordingly.

• Our children will be better off than we were – This was a bedrock belief of our parent’s generation. My parents KNEW it. We would be better educated – go to college. We would get “big jobs” and live a much more affluent life than them. I am not sure that my children WILL be better off than we were – oh, oh, feels like another blog post.

So, what am I saying? I am saying that things are COMPLICATED – not at all like I thought they would be in 1972. I wish that weren’t so. People WANT simplicity – in politics we DEMAND simple answers. Nowadays any politician that talks about policy too much is unelectable. We need to resist the urge to generalize – we need to study complicated issues – to understand them and then apply our own best judgment as to what we think is right. And we need to resist the urge to be discouraged or cynical. We DO have problems, but we CAN work through them if we recognize that there are two sides to every story and that despite what we may think, we may not have all the wisdom on every issue. I guess it is clear that I didn’t have it in 1972 and I don’t have it now.

“To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart.”

J.D. Vance – Best Selling Author and Yale Law School Graduate

It is continually surprising to me how I see things differently now than I did in my youth. I am 68 years old, not exactly at death’s door, but it now matters to me where I will be buried. I first moved from Rushmore in Nobles County, Minnesota where I was born, in 1970. I returned in 1975 and left again in 1983. I have lived in the Minneapolis – St. Paul metropolitan area since, a period of over 35 years, 40 years if you count the years between 1970 and 1975. I have lived in the house that I live in now longer than any other place in my life. I am anchored to this community. I know thousands of people here – co-workers, members of my church, neighbors, service club members, business people, government officials and so on. I graduated from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. This is where we raised our children. Why do I have this irrational sense that I need to be buried in a little cemetery east of Rushmore, Minnesota – to go back to where I came from?
In his New York Times best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance talks at length about his ties to his hillbilly roots. The book is widely thought to be a descriptor of the angst being experienced by working class white people and as a partial explanation of the election of President Trump. (This is a related but separate discussion.) Vance’s grandparents were part of the migration from the rural South to northern industrial centers. In Vance’s case, the move wasn’t geographically far from his native Kentucky, only to Middletown, Ohio. The cultural distance was much further. Vance’s family’s jobs at Armco Steel gave them economic gains that they could only dream of in Kentucky. But their second-generation family’s American Dream has been shattered. The loss of American manufacturing jobs and the downturn of local economies in the Rust Belt have been a big part of this. But there is more afoot than economic woes – Vance articulates it by telling his life’s story.
The “more” still is with Vance, even in his life as a successful investment banker living in San Francisco with a Yale law degree, a beautiful wife, a New York Times best-seller and more money that he could have ever imagined. The “more” relates to the feelings within him (and in me) that question whether we will, or CAN ever be more than where we come from. Will he always be a hillbilly? Will I ever be more than a poor farmer’s kid from the wind-swept prairies of Southwest Minnesota? Will the part of me that is inextricably tied to where I came from ever allow me to be a part of another world? But it goes beyond that – do I WANT to be a part of another world?
It is easy for me to not-miss some of what my first home has become. There are NO family farms like the one on which I was raised. Agriculture has become corporate, high tech and competitive. Huge livestock confinement factories foul the air for miles around with a stench that I never smelled growing up on our farm. Small towns like Rushmore are dying and children still leave for better opportunities elsewhere. The closely-knit churches where every mother felt entitled and responsible to take care of and discipline every other mother’s kid are getting to be few and far between. Backfilling the losses are problems we normally associate with large cities – drugs and violence. The culture there will evolve, and no doubt survive, but it is a different culture than I grew up with. So, what is the allure?
I suppose my family growing up was like most families – a mixture of positives and negatives. I am sure my vision is clouded by time, but my family was still the source of my core values:
• Hard work is a virtue – anyone who works hard is inherently valuable and anyone who doesn’t is not respected and of diminished value. For whatever other flaws they may have had, my people worked hard. They were industrious and fiercely independent.
• Family is first – friends are wonderful, but they may come and go. Your family is always your family.
• We live in the best country in the world. We can complain and criticize, but we wouldn’t trade it for ANYWHERE.
• Our children will be better off than we are. They will be richer, smarter and more successful than we are.
• We trust in God. To us that means that we go to church and support the church. Sometimes we fall away for a time, but we ALWAYS come back because our belief in God makes everything else make sense.
• When friends or neighbors are in need, helping them is not optional, it is required.
• We are common people – we are nothing special – we are of value only because we adhere to our other values. We never should think highly of ourselves.
• We are frugal people – waste is inherently bad, no matter what the situation. Fix it – don’t throw it away until it CAN’T be fixed.
• Its OK to not be financially successful as long as you were honest in your dealings with everyone. My Pop said, “the first law of business is that the other guy has to make a buck too”.
I think maybe what bothers me is that because I cling to these values that I don’t “fit in” here. I am too unsophisticated – I haven’t achieved much status and, in many ways, I haven’t tried. My values are not in keeping with what it takes today.
• Take care of Number One, no one else will.
• Work smart, not hard.
• Get ahead no matter what it takes.
• Your ARE something special (whether or not you have ever done one thing that is worthwhile) and people need to treat you that way.
• My country OWES me things and I am angry when I don’t think the government has treated me well enough.
Things aren’t all that bad and I might just be a cranky old man. And it is probably irrational and things might change, but something inside of me says I need to be laid to rest next to people who saw the world in the same way as I do and lived their lives in that manner.

“A ship is always safe at the shore – but that is NOT what it is built for.”
― Albert Einstein

Or: “Take a chance – Columbus did.”
– Les Ebeling

Virtually all Americans are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. My father’s family came from Germany in the early 1890’s. My great grandfather owned a commercial ship. One of his jobs was to ferry produce from the fertile plains of Friesland to markets in England. His older sons came to Chicago, America earlier in the decade. He and his wife planned to bring the younger children (one of which was my Grandfather) later. They planned to leave after the completion of his last voyage which was a mission to bring a load of peas to London. Unfortunately, the ship was lost at sea. (I always believed that Great-grandfather was lost in great sea-battle, valiantly going down with the ship. Reality can really be downer sometimes can’t it?) So, my Great-grandmother was faced with the prospect of traveling to the New World on her own, transporting several small children while grieving the loss of her husband.
A portion my Mother’s family emigrated from London after the Great Fire of 1666. He was a vicar whose church was burned to the ground. He struck out on his own heading for Massachusetts and settled on the banks of the Charles River. I have often wondered how all of those “vicar-skills” applied to that wild part of the world once he arrived. But apparently, he survived or else I would not be here.
It would have been so much safer for them to stay home. I am certain that somehow, they would have gotten by. Travel was so risky, there were so many unknowns, and how would they live in this new country called America?
American’s are inherently risk-takers. That is our genetic make-up. If courage and risk-taking weren’t in our blood, we wouldn’t be here – our ancestors would have stayed in their homelands where it was safe. How did all this work out? How did they overcome the odds to make it here? How did they make America great? I think that these factors were critical:
• They came to a land truly laden with milk and honey. The natural resources compared to where they were staggering – timber, minerals, and the most fertile farmland in the world. But those natural resources still had to be captured and utilized by PEOPLE – hardy, industrious, optimistic people who worked hard and sacrificed to make their dreams come to fruition.
• They came to a land with a system that made it possible for us to become the richest and most powerful country in the world. This was a system that rewarded risk takers but preserved order by the force of reasonable laws. By the way, I don’t think that this was the system glamourized by the “Tales of the Old West” – fierce, unyielding cowboys who single-handedly carved out a living with their six-shooters. I’m not anti-cowboys; I just think that our real heroes are shop keepers who invested their last resources to set up shop and then patiently worked long and hard to make their risky adventure have a successful end. Or homesteaders who set out to till the land on the prairies that had never been cultivated braving the dangers of weather and starvation.
So, what is my point? These people who are coming to America now – are they vastly different than us and our ancestors? I would argue that the vast majority of them are not. (I am not naïve – I believe there are some who come here with ill intentions. We MUST vet our new citizens to separate this pernicious minority.) But the vast majority is coming from poverty and war and discrimination just like our ancestors. And by the way some are coming with the idea that they will return to “the Old Country” as my Grandfather and many other immigrants thought. And let’s be clear about this. We NEED them just as the land needed our ancestors. Simple demographics tell us that our birthrates will not supply the human resources needed to power our economy in the future. But beyond that we need their spirt – the willingness to risk EVERYTHING – their fortunes and their very lives – to have a chance to live in this country. And when they are here, they will invest their sweat and blood to make their way here as our ancestors did. And then they will never leave as I will never leave, because America is the greatest country in the world.

This nation was built by men who took risks — pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, business men who were not afraid of failure, scientists who were not afraid of the truth, thinkers who were not afraid of progress, dreamers who were not afraid of action.
– Brooks Atkinson

“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”
― Flannery O’Connor

This is the first entry to my “blog”. I hear about people writing blogs and wonder why. How do they find the time to do this? Why do they think anybody cares? And yet I feel compelled to write. Why????????? It is amazing how over life’s span you learn some things about yourself. Maybe those are the most important things we ever learn. One of the things that I have learned about myself is contained in the quote from the novelist Flannery O’Connor. I love her quotations. This one hits me dead-on. “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” Or as I rephrase it for my own use: “I don’t know what I think until I read what I wrote.” Of course, that is paradoxical and leaves people sometimes shaking their heads. That has happened to me a lot in life – people shaking their heads at me. Writing forces me to sort out my thoughts. It tests me. And to be honest it often times indicts me, because I don’t live up to my own ideals and some of my thoughts are not valid. So, I am going to write – from time to time – when I think there is something to be said and can’t figure out what it is that needs to be said. And this might be the weirdest blog that there ever has been. I am not seeking any sponsors. I am not necessarily worried if anyone in the world reads it. I am writing for me. I need to do it – for me.