In response to Hal Rothman’s letter: “Solving
the West’s Water Problems with Economic Progress” is a
beguiling tune, if you’re attracted to that sort of music,
but this is the one I hum: Economic growth IS the problem (HCN,
12/26/05: Letters).
Consider this: John Muir, the great
naturalist and writer, won many noble battles but lost the war
when, in 1913, President Woodrow Wilson authorized a dam to flood
Hetch Hetchy Valley near Yosemite so the San Francisco Bay Area
could grow and prosper. That solved the Bay Area’s urban
problems? No. But it polarized the field into those who calculate
their values in dollars and more dollars, and those who calculate
them in clean water, fresh air, and a good night’s sleep.
In the same year, 1913, President Wilson also established
the Federal Reserve System, which has come to represent the soul of
the United States, and declares its dual mandates as stability and
economic growth. I may stand alone here, but I believe that these
are mutually antagonistic propositions which cannot exist in the
same place at the same time. Economic growth trumps stability.
It’s that simple.
Further, the 16th Amendment to
the Constitution was ratified in the same year, giving Congress the
power “to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source
derived …” providing them an inexhaustible source of great
wealth. Personally, I wish I could get my hands on some of those
income taxes that I worked so hard for that are being squandered
away on things dear to a distant Congress in the name of Economic
Progress.
The ghosts of 1913 have come home to haunt us.
They are real, they jump to frighten us at every turn, and they are
having a ball!
Ray Cook
Mill
Valley, California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The Ghosts of 1913.
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