ARE YOU A GOOD INVESTMENT?

The answer to this question is as follows:

You bet your sweet bippy you are! Yes, I know those very words date me, but I can stand dating!

Since the late 1960s and 1970s, Conservative Republicans and Liberal Democrats have spent billions of their own dollars trying to sell you and me on the brand of government that best suits their urges and lines their wallets.Thus, since we live in a market economy, we're vulnerable to their slick phrases and desperate political rages. What gets lost in this era of chronic campaigning is the value of the “gold" they are seeking. That “gold” is your political allegiance.

Consider the following: since 1992 (eight presidential elections ago), only once, in 2004, has the well-heeled, right-wing presidential candidate won the popular vote in a presidential election. I  think that's largely due to their appeal. Their sole solution to our national concerns has to do with the well-being of their own money. 

Here's an historic reality. Back in 1835, President Andrew Jackson's administration paid off the last of our debt from the War of Independence. Less than two years later between the years of 1837 and 1843, we suffered our second national depression. (The first had taken place between 1815 and 1819.) This second depression occurred because Andy Jackson wouldn't stop playing with the banking system. He hated all big banks and stocked the small banks largely with paper-backed species rather than with gold-backed currency. Business and banking have had much more to do with economic depression than has government spending on welfare cheats and intellectual elites. 

As a student of history, I know of no depression that has occurred due to deficit spending. That's not true of recessions, but it is true of depressions.

    

All you've got to do is turn on your television, your radio, or your internet to realize rapidly how vital you really are to lots of the “big shots” in commercial advertising, money marketing assessments, state and national political calculations, and, most starkly since February of 2020, the socio/political welfare of these United States of America.

Too many years ago now, my beloved education instructor, Dr. Wayne Mahood, pointed out to us the number of roles a classroom teacher plays in a day's teaching. Utilizing what was called a “socio-gram,” he directed our attention to the various personality types that exist in any classroom and how they intermingle during the school day. The teacher's task was to know and understand how these socio-groups react during class time. Thus, a teacher is an instructor, an inquisitor, a policeman or woman, a counselor, and even at times a temporary parent during the day.

In addition to being a taxpayer, you are a customer, a consumer of public and private services, a worker, a medical patient, a religious parishioner,  and a parent responsible for what your children do and buy. Whether or not you pay income taxes these days, you reimburse business executives and stockholders any time they feel overtaxed.

Very soon there will be a political struggle between the forces of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden over the ever growing deficit. President Joe's forces will seek to minimize the deficit and Speaker Kevin's will seek to maximize it. Of course, all deficits ought to be paid as soon as possible, but our economy doesn't exist alone in the world and if the deficit can't be paid because the federal government is shut down, a lot of people here at home are going to suffer.

Too many people who regard themselves as “progressives” openly brag about their decision not to vote in future elections. If that's their decision, they should be blushing rather than bragging. When you take the time to think about it, you, the un-polled, un-consulted, and (largely due to your own personal devaluation) uncounted election day voter, constitute the exact element that will (in the words of Abraham Lincoln) "nobly save or meanly lose" the greatest hope on earth.

Winston Churchill once quoted the great Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli as observing that “the world is for the few and for the very few.” In 2023, every citizen in this country is entitled to some form of national investment be it a tax right-off, public assistance, Social Security or veteran's benefits. Hence, we've gone from being a world for the very few to world of the many.

Let's invest in each others welfare! A balance approach is the only way we can all safely prevail!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY