Are Kansans better off today than they were in 2008?
That question, multiplied by 49, seems to be key to November’s election results, according to the pundits.
Since the answer must be in dollars and cents, given the materialistic nature of the query, the answer must be yes. The biggest industry in our state is agriculture. Commodity prices marched steadily upward over the past four years. Farming hasn’t been so rewarding for decades.
If the subject is state government, taxes have rarely been lower or state balances much higher. Gov. Sam Brownback felt comfortable signing the largest tax cut in Kansas history because the state was in the black again after three years of recession-induced revenue shortfalls. (The tax cuts were far too great and will have to be revisited, but that’s another issue.)
The Kansas economy was recovering nicely until this year’s drought hit. The unemployment rate has been about 25 percent below the national rate. The housing crisis skipped Kansas families. Because there never was a housing boom in most Kansas communities, there wasn’t a bust.
This said, a more pertinent question to ask would be whether today’s parents think their children will be better off than they are. In other words, is the outlook for the future bright or gloomy?
The thoughtful answer is both.
It is bright because people keep getting smarter, which makes them more able to tackle tough problems and solve them. The progress made — and being made every day — in medical science is truly astounding. Our mastery of technology was demonstrated just a few days ago by the flawless landing of Curiosity on Mars. That car-size mobile laboratory will be sending information about the red planet to scientists on Earth for weeks, maybe years: an astounding feat.
Progress in other areas, such as human rights, moves forward haltingly, falls back, then jerks forward another inch or two. People of a certain age, however, can celebrate the world’s great powers haven’t gone to war with each other for half a century, that atomic weapons haven’t been used since World War II, that the number of people living in democracies keeps increasing, and that the poverty rate in the world’s two largest countries, China and India, has dropped dramatically.
The immediate future in the world’s rich nations is clouded because of debt. Because people in this country, and in almost every other democracy, have demanded more from government than they were willing to pay for, government spending now must be cut back to make payments on the debt this imbalance created. And because the world is bound together with a myriad of economic shackles, what hurts Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, sends shivers of pain through the other national economies.
STILL A THIRD question should be asked: Do you believe the president of the United States (1) caused the recession and (2) can create a prosperous nation in a debt-ridden world acting alone?
Thoughtful Americans will answer “of course not” to both of these propositions. The recession of 2008 was well on its way when Barack Obama took office. The debt crisis that still holds Europe in its grip was not caused by any action in Washington, D.C. The United States cannot rebuild world prosperity unilaterally; neither will the U.S. economy recover fully until Europe and Asia also thrive. This is, as America’s Wendell Willkie famously observed in 1940, One World.
The challenge America’s next president faces is to work steadily and wisely with leaders in the rest of the world to stimulate growth while reducing debt. He will move toward that goal faster if he can disarm the belligerent radicals in America’s political parties.
Americans can do miracles when they work together. Come next January, we should try.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
