Economics

I recently got an e-mail from a neighbor, who was concerned about rising costs of government.  He wanted to know how I stood on entitlements, and whether my approach included cradle-to-grave assistance.  Good questions, hard questions.  He's retired, on a fixed income (as I am), and his property taxes have doubled since his retirement; the last two years, he has had to borrow money to pay them. 

It's the same kind of concerns that most middle-class Americans are expressing, about real financial setbacks.  Here's what I wrote to him:

Thanks for your thoughts.  None of that is easy, and we ran out of simple answers a long time ago.

I'm glad you mentioned my thoughts about government's role.  I think there are basic needs that, as a community, we can provide for each other.  But I really mean 'basic' here.  I'm retired, too, and on a fixed income, and I'm no more in favor of cradle-to-grave entitlements than you are.  It would be great if the free market could provide enough prosperity, spread around equally, that anyone who wanted to work could work, and enjoy at least a basic standard of living, without going hungry, or having to borrow to pay taxes.

But the free market doesn't work that way, as you know.  I assume you worked all your life, but the free market didn't leave you the means to retire with a basic standard of living.  I assume you receive Social Security (as I will, soon), which is our community's (our country's) way of helping out our older citizens who had no retirement plan, or one that didn't meet their needs.  For many of us, yourself included, even that isn't working so well.

But it's not really the market's job to provide us all with that prosperity, even when we work hard all our lives.  It's the market's job to maximize profits for corporations.  When this works well, prosperity affects a large proportion of us - but never all of us.  And when the market doesn't work well, like these days, there are a lot of us who get left out.

So what I'm saying is that I don't want to leave these folks behind.  In a country like ours, even in this economy, it's still a pretty small proportion.   9% unemployment is awful - but it still means that 91% of us are working. 

How do we run a government - Otsego County, for example - with increasing costs and falling revenues?  We cut to the bone, of course.  That means, to me, that everyone sacrifices.  You already have, paying interest on the loan to cover your taxes.  There are some who haven't.  So as we look for ways to pare down the size and scope of our County government operations, we have to make sure that those who have the least don't give up the most.  That's the way it generally works, and that has to stop.  Those who have a lot - not you or I, but those who have a lot - must be asked to help out.  Our solution has to be fair to everyone.

So I don't have a detailed plan to lay out for you (yet), but I hope I've been clear (if a little wordy):  1.  We have to examine every dollar we spend.  2.  The solutions have to be fair to everyone.   3.  We have to identify the really basic needs of those who are left out   4.  No one's entitled - we respond to basic need emergencies. 

Your questions really got me to think on a deeper level - thanks - and I really believe that 'no one's entitled.'  It's not about entitlement.  It's about responding to really basic human needs.  In my career, I met a whole lot of really poor folks.  Many of them worked very hard - some harder than I ever had to - but they never got ahead economically, and they often were short of food, or heat, or utilities, etc.  They got left out.  That's what I mean by 'basic human needs.'  If we can help them meet those needs through the free market, that would be my first choice, by a long shot.  That hasn't worked so well.

As I said, no easy answers.  Neither I, nor my opponent, are economists, nor have we served in County government before.  If I'm elected, I intend to learn and listen.  Thanks for being part of that conversation.

What do you think?