Sailing Into Oblivion: June 7, 2017

Grandchildren would be nice, but I’d hate like the dickens to try and explain to one what is going on in America now.

I confess. I haven’t a clue. Nothing in the study of American history could prepare one for an understanding of what our current national mood is.

In the past week, the President of the United States of America has insulted three of our staunchest post-World War Two allies—all internationally respected nations. In addition, he took sides in a squabble between two Middle Eastern countries, the disparaged one just happening to be a country in which the United States has a strategic naval base, the chosen one happening to be the one that furnished 15 of the 19  hijackers on 9-11. Oh, and nobody asked him to take sides. He just did.

Taking sides in a Middle-Eastern squabble reminds one of the apprehension that police officers talk about when responding to domestic disturbances. If one party doesn’t get you, they both will.

What I might have the most difficulty in explaining is the economic policy being espoused. It goes something like this.

- Although both corporate profits and corporatetax-avoidance skills are at all-time highs, corporations need tax cuts in order to survive and grow the economy.

- Although reduced revenue and increased expenditures create massive deficits and massive borrowing, the repayment of which starves economic growth, such deficits don’t matter somehow.

- Job sectors facing dwindling demand must be protected through federal largess. Thus, we can expect country grocery stores, such as the one my family, owned to again proliferate. Oh, and for those folks who once built guitar tuners that were made obsolete by a free phone app, help is on the way.

- It is vital to cut taxes on corporations although historically they have been as likely to use the additional money to reward shareholders, increase dividends, or purchase and plunder other corporations for their assets or over funded pension plans as they are to expand and grow the economy.

- Corporate profits, despite both the laws of gravity and mathematics, can expand at fixed percentages forever and ever.

Yes, and those summer afternoon thunderheads soaring into the sky don’t ever topple over from their weight. We just need to have trust.

One would certainly need a grandchild who believed in magic to understand all this.

Gravity will always win.