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Betting on Ourselves; Believing in Ourselves

An analogy:  "This is like that."


It might be that we learn mostly by analogy:  "This is like that, but different."


Creative thinking may be by analogy:  "If we change what we did over there, we could. . . ."


But analogies trap us, too.  This is not always like that.


A commentator in one of today's newspapers described some of the newly elected members of the Minnesota House of Representatives as young zealots running around with their hair on fire.  All over the country, there are new politicians chanting slogans about things they have not thought about very much.  One of their favorite mantras is that a government budget is just like a household budget:  "You can't spend what you don't have!"  So don't spend!


Most households don't print their own currency, of course, although a few try.  It lands you in jail.  But putting aside other similarities and differences, we do spend what we do not have. I live in a house.  I borrowed most of the money to buy it.  I drive a pickup.  I borrowed most of the cost of the pickup, too.  When I was young, and when I was no longer young, I borrowed money to go to graduate school.  


What is it we really need in this country, right now?  Jobs.  An educated workforce.  Upgraded roads, and industry, and energy sources.  A health care system.  A secure retirement.  


How is cutting taxes going to provide jobs, remake our educational system, build new bridges and roads and power lines, develop renewable energy sources, improve the health of the people, provide for a decent and humane old age?  Cutting taxes won't do that.  Cutting taxes will make all of those things worse.  


As a nation, we need to bet on our future.  We need to imagine a post-industrial economy. We have to educate ourselves for the value-added jobs, invest in science and technology, and design a genuinely universal health care system.  


Like a family that believes in itself, we need to bet on our future, borrow to buy a house and car and education, because not to do so is to bet on being a loser.  

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