The Economy Imagined As A Backhoe

I've was reading up on what the government bailout of Freddie and Fannie will mean to the average American taxpayer today, and getting all worked up. Again, it seems, those who have a great deal have worked out a scheme to get more, and those who would protect the public from this avarice are unwilling to enforce any reasonable law upon them. And then I heard my little baby boy chatting with his backhoe toy as if it were a close confidante and was inspired by his imagination.

An act of imagination led to the invention of the adult-sized backhoe. This machine so inspired the imagination of children that someone thought to fashion toy backhoes. And now my little boy sees in its design an intelligence that he relates to and has begun a kind of conversation with it. Who knows how this early relationship between baby boy and creative object will influence him later on. The act of imagination seems limitless in its possibilities.

And so I will choose not to allow my intellect and emotions to negotiate the minutia of this economic situation right now. Right now, I'll imagine the economy is like a great big backhoe. The genius of the backhoe is that it allows people to get many times more work done than was possible without it. Roads and buildings would take an enormous amount of time to even begin building if not for the quick work of the earth moving backhoe. Our economy is designed to get work done. The size and capacity of our economy and the manner in which its design was adapted by countries worldwide is evidence, I believe, of the intelligence inspiring its design (and I am making no reference to God here- I'm speaking not of faith, but of reality on the ground).

But our backhoe is broken because we've been running it without doing basic maintenance for decades. Although designed to do work, our economy also must have a functioning maintenance crew able to fix repairs as needed. Freddie and Fannie were just two of the enormous work machines that have been needing repairs for some time. People in the government, even from our current White House, have been pointing it out for years. "Stop that machine, its out of oil (otherwise known as equity)!" "For God sake, the shovel is falling off (also known as housing prices."

But machines can be repaired and sometimes they need to be rebuilt. I believe we are at a point where we may need to do extensive repairs and we need a functioning Congress able to do it. I suspect the Democrats may be more likely to ignore the calls of the demands of the special interests people, like foreman working their crew do death, and get some reasonable oversight legislation passed. But maybe not. They haven't impressed anyone so far. Or perhaps this backhoe will break down beyond repair and need to be scrapped and entirely rebuilt.

This happened before. The laissez faire capitalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ran their backhoe right over a cliff (most amazing because they hadn't even invented backhoes yet). Doesn't anyone remember their grandparents talking about the Great Depression? It really didn't sound very fun. But that may be where we're heading at this point. This morning was the first time I heard a journalist bring up the Great Depression in discussing our current economy, a journalist from the L.A. Times. Many of us have been wondering this for months.

It may be that now is a most important time to use our imaginations. Are the backhoes of our personal finances in good repair? Does it need maintenance? What can we do within our powers as citizens to elect a reasonable and responsible governing body? And here's where the imaginations of those of us who are part of the dominant American culture are really stretched: Do we need to ask for or offer help to someone else?

We can't have a work and product only mentality. We must understand a healthy economy includes serious oversight and regulation. A healthy economy looks after the well being of its workforce. A healthy economy doesn't run itself and the people who constitute it off a cliff. We act intelligently on our own and on our neighbor's behalf. We act as employees, voters and family members to ensure we are working in a manner that increases the good of our people. We need to get our backhoe back in working shape and it may take imagination to do it.