Tending the Garden

I hear all the time about "unleashing" the American economy and all of the growth that will surely follow. This has got me a'thinkin'.

What if I "unleash" the growth in my wife's garden by unburdening it with all of those pesky "regulations" I impose about what can and can't grow therein? It seems that if I do so, I will likely get considerably more "growth" in the garden; the only problem is, the "growth" I get is not beneficial whatsoever. Instead of having blueberries, I will have thistles. Further, I could tend my garden such that all of the "growth" produces very few "fruits." This wouldn't be a problem if there were very few people attempting to eat from this garden; however, if I were trying to feed my family from this garden, using the entire garden to produce enough "fruits" for just me would be no way to tend the garden.

I think my point is that the kind of economic growth our country gets is an important consideration that is being utterly ignored. This nation has spent no fewer than 40 years genuflecting at the altar of "growth" without ever considering the type of growth that we want. When we talk about GDP, all we are doing is measuring the quantity of growth. There are other metrics by which we could measure the quality of growth we get; but one example is to consider the "median" wages.

Side note: Always be suspicious when people talk about "average" wages or "average" tax cuts. If my 4-year-old son, my 2-year-old daughter, and Bill Gates are all in a bar, the "average" wealth of the three of them is rather impressive and VERY misleading.

Back to my point:

Ours is the most prosperous, dynamic, powerful country in recorded history. There is no reason whatsoever that we can't have an economy that "grows" in such a way as to benefit more than 1 out of every 500 or so people. That we have such an economy is the product of our collective choices.

We have chosen this economy, collectively. Now we get to live with it, individually.