THE ECONOMIC TREE

While I was driving today, an analogy popped into my ever-active mind. Recently, I've seen a lot of pictures of trees ripped out of the ground by high winds and often sent crashing into homes, cars and people. It can be quite disastrous.

The similarity to economics flooded into my consciousness. An economy is much like a tree. We see the glorious part that waves around in the sunshine, rain and wind, but we tend to not consider much those all important roots that keep the whole thing tethered and flourishing. They'd better be sunk very deep into very solid soil. If anything stunts their development or weakens the soil in which they're anchored, disaster is on the way.

Our trickle down economic system is very much like one of those trees. Oh, it looks very stable and glorious if you happen to have a fat job and bank account. You can dazzle anyone who happens by and strut your stuff as someone special, gifted and important. A lot of people are dazzled by the prospect of being such a glorious success as they fight for advantage in our unbalanced system which tends to ignore both the soil and roots that make for a long-lasting, healthy tree. The consumer is constantly being deprived of everything that sustains the nourishment of that tree and firmly stabilizes it for the benefit of the opulent few joyfully cavorting in the economic breezes.

What they don't realize is storms are inevitable, and one of these days one is going to come along and uproot the whole unstable mess. It's inevitable that all will someday, and probably soon, come crashing down!