In the Economic Crisis, an Opportunity for Citizens

You are the taxpayer feeling like you were left holding the bag with the Wall Street bailout. You are the worker cursing the oil companies for high gas prices and feeling like a hostage to your own car and your dream house payments. You are the citizen who wants a bright future for your children and low taxes for your family. This messed-up economy is actually your fault. Here’s why.

If you are like the vast majority of Americans, you haven’t taken the time to really look past the temporary economic conditions to learn about the basic long-term strategies our leaders have proposed for building a healthy economy and haven’t done your part to hold our leaders accountable for articulating a clear and forthright approach to fostering Americans’ economic well-being.

Many of the pundits are already laying the blame for our credit crisis at the feet of borrowers who got in over their heads and whose defaults started the boulder rolling down the hill that has grown into a financial system avalanche of panic and frozen credit. But average citizens are just bit players in that drama. The real reason citizens are to blame for our current financial mess is because most have never taken responsibility for learning about the basic approaches for creating economic well-being for the greatest number of Americans and haven’t forced our nation’s leaders to have a coherent strategy that reflects their priorities.

But the current economic downturn provides an opportunity for normal folks to get up to speed on economic issues and exert some influence on their leaders.

The first thing angry and skeptical citizens should do is take a step back from the talk of “crisis” and put things in perspective. It does look like we’re headed into a serious recession that will adversely affect families across the nation, but after the market shakeout, the United States will still have an economy with strong, innovative companies, healthy financial infrastructure and incomparable assets. Growth and widespread prosperity will return, but we should be more conscientious about the direction in which we’re heading.

Here are three basic approaches to building a strong economy that voters should learn more about:

Approach one: Keep taxes low and government involvement at a minimum so that the free market can work. From this perspective, the free market consistently provides a higher standard of living than any other method and, while difficult recessions come and go, making business as free as possible means the American consumer benefits with lower unemployment, lower prices and wider choices of products.

Approach two: Build from the ground up by providing for the well-being of middle- and working-class Americans. This means investing in government social programs that improve the financial well-being of typical Americans so they have more resources to purchase the products American companies sell by doing things like raising the minimum wage, bolstering unions to raise the wages of ordinary workers, improving the healthcare system so citizens are less vulnerable to personal bankruptcy, revamping our tax system to bring in more revenue from high-net-worth Americans and companies and reduce the tax burden for lower-income workers.

Approach three: Maintain our basic system, but get our federal government’s fiscal house in order and focus government investments on efforts to build “21st century industry” in America. Here, the priority would be to reduce U.S. debt (which would not only reduce the amount of interest we pay on national debt, but would also make more funds available for investment in the markets) and make targeted investments like research and development for high tech and alternative energy companies, and programs to encourage young people to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math. Compared to the other two approaches, this one might be described as “tinkering at the edges” or “mending, not ending,” depending on your perspective.

One of these perspectives may appeal to you, angry voter. But these are just very broad approaches that demand more inspection from you. The billions and trillions involved and the complexities of the financial system may have you thinking that it’s all beyond your comprehension, but the core issues are not that different from your own home economics. It’s about not spending beyond one’s means, making wise investments in the future and being clear about the values that guide your choices.

I know, I know, you’re very busy, what with your picking up the kids at hockey practice and gathering round the TV to watch Dancing with the Stars. Luckily for you, there are a bunch of do-gooder organizations making it easy for you with nonpartisan issue guides that function essentially as citizen “cheat sheets.” My own organization has produced an economy issue guide in The Voter's Survival Kit. It’s only 14 pages long and you can probably read it between commercials.

Being angry about the bailout, gas prices and everything else that seems to be going wrong with America’s economy is understandable. In fact, it’s commendable. Get angry! Stand up and say: I’m not going to take it anymore! But if you don’t want to be taken advantage of yet again and want to arm yourself against the political spin of the presidential campaigns, get with the program. Learn the basics about the economy now.

Michael Hamill Remaley is Vice President and Director of Communications for PublicAgenda.org, home of The Voter's Survival Kit


.