Allen Alley: Rainbows and Moonbeams

"Rainbows and Moonbeams"
By Allen Alley
Was it a “Portlandia” script or an Oregonian front page story? The April 17 article on Governor Kitzhaber and Cylvia Hayes, who spent three hours in a class to learn how to construct a happiness index, could have been either one.  This happiness index, promoted by a Portland State University professor, purports to give a more accurate picture of economic health than the value of all goods and services produced, also known as gross domestic product (GDP).

The happiness index or Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) was promoted at a recent United Nations summit meeting on happiness and originated in that bastion of economic energy, Bhutan.  The Kingdom of Bhutan is a tiny Himalayan country with a GDP per person of $2,600.  Bhutan’s GDP ranks 129th in the world with other economic powerhouses such as Bolivia, Sri Lanka and Mongolia.  In perspective, the U.S. GDP per person is 18 times higher than Bhutan.

Is the Governor really going to model our economy after a third world country?  Are we giving up trying to measure ourselves by the economic measures of successful nations and instead partner with the Bhutanese and the UN to just make up our own happiness index?  Even “Portlandia’s” writers could not have conceived of this plot twist.

A trip to Taiwan in 1982 proved to me that economic prosperity creates happiness and a cleaner environment.  At the time, the streets of Taipei looked like a scene from Blade Runner.  Acid rain literally etched the buildings and stripped the paint off cars and signs.  Swarms of smoke-belching dilapidated scooters were the transportation mode of choice.  It seemed that Taiwan might sink into the ocean under the weight of the detritus of society, and all that would be left would be an oil slick and Styrofoam packing worms.  Then an amazing thing happened.  They became prosperous.  Today the GDP per person of Taipei is second only to Tokyo in Asia and is higher than that of Hong Kong, Singapore and Seoul.  Once they became economically prosperous, they did not want to live in squalor.  They had the community wealth to clean up their environment, and they did. 

Oregon’s economic report card is apparently so stubbornly awful that rather than creating an environment where prosperity can flourish, Governor Kitzhaber is going to change the grading system.  Now our economic F will be waved away, because we try really hard and have nice parks.

Global economic competition is brutal.  There are no bonus points for effort or style.  You either succeed or fail, and lately Oregon has been failing.

Since 1995 Oregonians have been getting poorer relative to other Americans.  We have slipped 10 places in state personal income ranking from 22nd to 32nd.  At the same time our neighbor to the north Washington rose from 16th to 13th.  In 1995 an Oregonian earned $750 less than the average American in personal income, today we are $3,700 behind.  That means the average family of 4 in Oregon is $14,800 a year poorer than the average American family.  So either we have to have significantly higher taxes or settle for inferior schools, roads, and public safety.  We cannot fill potholes with happiness.

Governor Kitzhaber, we need to embrace GDP and rededicate ourselves to creating an environment where it actually increases.  We must maximize access to the assets that make Oregon a potentially great place to build prosperity.  Open and expand our ports.  Use our natural resources.  Go out and actively promote Oregon timber as the greenest building product on earth.  Keep power rates low.  Manage the Columbia River to extract more economic value for Oregon.  Embrace hydro power as the renewable, CO2 free, source of clean energy that it is.  Create an environment where we feel our state is a partner in prosperity, not an impediment.

It’s difficult to attain long-term happiness without some measure of security and prosperity.  Gone are the days when a barter economy could provide all of the goods and services we need.  Besides, much of the capital created in Oregon comes from trade with other states and nations.  Happiness is a result, not a thing that can be traded.  Oregonians cannot pay their mortgage with moonbeams, and even the governor is unlikely to convince the public employee unions to accept rainbows rather than raises.

Here is the link to the op-ed on the Oregonian website. This op-ed was received via email, which also included a link to the ORP donation page. Read More......

How Three Texas Counties Created Personal Social Security Accounts and Prospered

FORBES, 5/12/2011 by Merrill Matthews, Contributor (h/t: Benton County Americans for Prosperity/Facebook) - Across the country, state and local governments are facing huge unfunded liabilities for their employee pension plans. And then there’s Social Security. ✧ But three neighboring Texas counties, which opted out of Social Security 30 years ago by creating personal retirement accounts, have avoided a fiscal train wreck while providing retirees with even more retirement income. ✧ Galveston, Matagorda and Brazoria County employees, many of them union members, have seen their retirement savings grow every year, even during the Great Recession. If state and local governments—and Congress—are really looking for a path to long-term sustainable entitlement reform, they might start with what is referred to as the “Alternate Plan.” Read more at Forbes... Read More......

The Bad Luck President

By Dr. Milton R. Wolf at The Washington Times - America’s misfortune is nothing if not Obamanomics: [Excerpt] “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded - here and there, now and then - are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck.’“ ✧ Mr. President, you didn’t run into bad luck. You created it. ✧ America is indeed blessed, but it’s not by some accident that previous generations were able to create the most prosperous nation in the history of humankind. Our founding principles of constitutionally limited government, individual liberty and free-market capitalism have unleashed the powerful American engine of prosperity. This engine is fueled by individual players’ investments of labor and capital, and both are supplied directly in proportion to their confidence of realizing reward. Read more at the Washington Times... Read More......

Profound words to share with Congress

(Hat tip: Stella Guenther via email) Here's a short profound paragraph that might make a good letter/email to blitz Congress with:

"You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it." --Adrian Rogers, 1931-2005

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Deja vous

"A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about." --Woodrow Wilson - 1911

(Hat tip: Stella Guenther via Restore America)
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